Dr. Thomas Arnold of Rugby, "England's greatest schoolmaster," was born at West Cowes, Isle of Wight, June 13, 1795. He was the youngest son and seventh child of William and Martha Arnold. His father died before he was six years old. His early education was intrusted to his mother's sister, Mrs. Delafield; and later, at the age of twelve, he was sent to Winchester.

This aunt he never forgot. When she was seventy-seven he wrote to her, "This is your birthday, on which I have thought of you, and loved you, for as many years past as I can remember. No tenth of September will ever pass without my thinking of you and loving you."

The shy, retiring boy was early fond of books. When he was three, he received a present from his father of Smollett's "History of England," "as a reward," says Dean Stanley, in his life of Arnold, "for the accuracy with which he had gone through the stories connected with the portraits 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 recognizing by their shape at a glance the different counties of the dissected map of England."

His first childish literary work was at the age of seven,—a play, on "Piercy, Earl of Northumberland." Between eight and twelve, when at school at Warminster, he rejoiced in Homer. A schoolmate writes: "Arnold's delight was in preparing for some part of the Siege of Troy; with a stick in his right hand, and the cover of a tin box, or any flat piece of wood, tied upon his left arm, he would come forth to the battle, and from Pope's Homer would pour forth fluently the challenge or the reproach.... Every book he had was easily recognized as his property by helmet and shields, and Hectors and Achilleses, on all the blank leaves; many of mine had some token of his graphic love of those heroes."

The home life seems to have been full of affection. Rose E. Selfe, in the World's Worker series, gives these letters. His brother Matthew writes him from school, in 1800, before he is five years old, asking him for a letter, "with all the news you can think of. What new books you have, whether you like the great Bible as well as you did, how your garden and the flowers come on."

"My darling little Tom...." his sister Susannah writes, "I shall expect to find you very much improved, particularly in your reading. As you know you are fond of kissing, give our DEAREST, DEAREST, DEAREST Mamma and Aunt ten each from Fan and myself. Oh, how I wish I could see and kiss them myself, and you, too, my sweet dear Tom! I should like to know very much if you are as fond of geography as you were last Christmas; tell me when you honour us with a letter. Adieu now, my lovely Boy. With sincerely wishing you health and happiness,

I remain, your truly affectionate and loving sister,

Sue Arnold."

This sister, an invalid for twenty years, was most unselfish and lovable in character. She died at Laleham in 1832.

At the Winchester school he was called the poet Arnold to distinguish him from another boy of the same name. He used to recite ballad poetry for the pleasure of his schoolmates, and wrote a long poem, "Simon de Montfort," in imitation of Scott's "Marmion."

He had read Gibbon and Mitford through twice before he left Winchester, at sixteen. At fourteen he enjoyed "the modest, unaffected, and impartial narratives of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon," and did not like "the numerous boasts which are everywhere to be met with in the Latin writers." He thought Roman history "scandalously exaggerated," and had no idea that he was thereafter, in his manhood, to write a fair and delightful Roman history himself.

In 1811 he was elected a scholar at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and four years later became a Fellow at Oriel College. He gained in 1815 and in 1817 the Chancellor's prize for the two University essays, Latin and English. In college he had a passion for Aristotle and Thucydides. Next to these he loved Herodotus. Though delicate in appearance, he took long walks, in which he studied nature, being a lover of flowers, birds, and clouds.

His friendships were warm and lasting. John Keble, author of "The Christian Year," Whately, later Archbishop of Dublin, and Coleridge, afterwards chief-justice, were his especial friends.

During his four years as a Fellow in Oriel College, he took private pupils, and read in the Oxford libraries. His plan was to make himself master of some one period, like the fifteenth century, and write full notes upon it.

Oxford was always very dear to Arnold. He wrote years later, "If I live till I am eighty, and were to enjoy all the happiness that the warmest wish could 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."

During these college years he was often restless and weary of duty, inclined to indolence, and an early riser with the greatest difficulty. These things he overcame in later life. He had some religious doubts, which completely vanished as he studied and thought more deeply.

In 1819 Arnold removed to Laleham, with his mother, sister, and aunt, and remained here for the next nine years, preparing private pupils for the universities.

A year after coming to Laleham, he married, when he was twenty-five, Mary, youngest daughter of the Rev. John Penrose, in Nottinghamshire, and sister of one of his best college friends, Trevenen Penrose. She was a worthy helper through all the laborious years which followed.

Although Arnold had fitted himself for the Church, he loved the work of teaching. He wrote to a friend about to engage in a similar occupation. "I know it has a bad name, but my wife and I always happened to be fond of it.... 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 oftener become lazy and languid without the mind gaining any vigor to compensate for it....

"The misery of private tuition seems to me to consist in this, that 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 upon 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....

"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."

"Large private schools," he thought, "the worst possible system; the choice lies between public schools, and an education whose character may be strictly private and domestic."

The home at Laleham was very dear to him. Here six of his children were born. He loved the quiet walks along the banks of the Thames, his garden back of his house, where, he said, "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 the churchyard, where in after years his mother, his infant child, and now his distinguished son Matthew are resting.

One of his pupils at Laleham thus writes of Arnold: "His 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.... His hold over all his pupils 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 sympathetic thrill caught from a spirit that was earnestly at work in the world....

"In all this there was no excitement, no predilection for one class of work above another ... but an humble, profound, and most religious consciousness that work is the appointed calling of man on earth, the end for which his various faculties were given, the element in which his nature is ordained to develop itself."

Arnold used to say, "one must always expect to succeed, but never think he had succeeded."

Besides teaching, Arnold devoted his spare time to philology and history, preparing a Lexicon of Thucydides and articles on Roman History. He learned the German language that he might read Niebuhr's "History of Rome," and thereafter became deeply interested in German literature.

He wrote a friend concerning his 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." Plato's "PhÆdo" was a great favorite. He thought it "nearly the perfection of human language."

To another he wrote, "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."

Arnold was always a learner. He studied Hebrew when he was forty-three and Sanscrit when he was forty-five. He urged ministers not to study works on "Divinity" only. "A man requires," he said "first, the general cultivation of his mind, by constantly reading the works of the very greatest writers, philosophers, orators, and poets, and next, an understanding of the actual state of society, ... and of political economy as teaching him how to deal with the poor.... Further, I should advise a constant use of the biography of good men."

Arnold's friends were urging him to a wider sphere of influence. Laleham had become too expensive for his means, and he had determined to move elsewhere. Just at this time the head-mastership of Rugby became vacant. There were about thirty applicants, and his testimonials were sent in late. His college friend, Dr. Hawkins, afterwards Provost of Oriel, wrote the twelve trustees a letter about Arnold, predicting that if he were elected, "he would change the face of education all through the public schools of England." He was elected in December, 1827, and the words of Dr. Hawkins were fully verified.

In 1828 he received the degree of D.D., and entered upon his new duties.

It cost the Arnold family many a struggle to leave Laleham. "I cannot tell you," Dr. Arnold writes J. T. Coleridge, "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, were it not for my full consciousness that I have nothing to do with rest here, but with labor."

To another friend he writes, "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."

For fourteen years Arnold lived at Rugby and did his great work, which has made his name known and honored among all educated nations. "What a pity," said some persons, "that a man fit to be a statesman should be employed in teaching school-boys."

But Arnold knew the greatness of his chosen work. "It is a most touching thing to me," he said, "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 anything which affects me more. If ever I could receive a new boy from his father without emotion, I should think it was high time to be off."

With much firmness he united great tenderness. "Lenity is seldom to be repented of," he wrote a friend who had asked his advice in dealing with a difficult pupil. "In cases," says Dean Stanley, "when it might have been thought that tenderness would have been extinguished by indignation, he was sometimes so deeply affected in pronouncing sentence of punishment on offenders as to be hardly able to speak."

Once, when he heard of some great fault in one of his pupils, "I felt," he said—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."

At another time he said to one of the masters, speaking of a promising lad, "If he should turn out ill, I think it would break my heart."

He wrote a friend, "I believe that boys may be governed a great deal by gentle methods and kindness, and appealing to their better feelings, 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 to my room and spoken to them quietly, in private, for not knowing their lesson, and I have found that this treatment produced its effect afterwards in making them do better. But of course deeds must second words when needful, or words will soon be laughed at."

When occasion demanded, Arnold could be very firm. If a boy were habitually idle, or doing harm in the school, he was expelled, for a time or permanently. "Often it would be wholly unknown who were thus dismissed or why," says Dean Stanley; "latterly, Arnold generally allowed such cases to remain till the end of the half-year, that their removal might pass altogether unnoticed."

Many parents were displeased, but Arnold never hesitated for a moment in what he believed to be his duty. The result was that the tone of the school became so elevated that more wished to come than could be accommodated.

He always appealed to the honor of the pupils. Once he said, with great spirit, in an address in which he had spoken of bad feeling amongst the boys, "Is this a Christian school? I cannot remain here if all is to be carried on by constraint and force; if I am to be here as a jailer, I will resign my office at once."

He said, "My great desire is to teach my boys to govern themselves—a much better thing than to govern them well myself."

At another time, when several boys had been sent away, and there was much discontent in consequence, he said, "It is not necessary 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."

He trusted the boys, and never seemed to watch them. Their word was not doubted. "If you say so, that is quite enough; of course I believe your word," was his frequent statement.

"There grew up in consequence," says Stanley, "a general feeling that it was a shame to tell Arnold a lie—he always believes one." If falsehood was discovered, the punishment was severe.

He usually had great patience. When living at Laleham he once spoke sharply to a dull pupil. "Why do you speak angrily, sir?" said the youth, looking up in his face; "indeed, I am doing the best that I can."

Years afterward Arnold used to say to his children, "I never felt so much ashamed in my life—that look and that speech I have never forgotten."

For mere "intellectual acuteness" he had no admiration, unless united with goodness. "If there be one thing on earth which is truly admirable," he said, "it is to see God's wisdom blessing an inferiority of natural powers, where they have been honestly, truly, and zealously cultivated.... I would stand to that man hat in hand."

Arnold's consistent and noble life won the undying regard of his pupils. One pupil writes: "I am sure that I do not exaggerate my feelings when I say that I felt a love and reverence for him as one of quite awful greatness and goodness, for whom, I well remember, that I used to think I would gladly lay down my life.... I used to believe that I, too, had a work to do for him in the school, and did, for his sake, labor to raise the tone of the set I lived in."

Who can ever forget the description of Arnold in that natural and fascinating book, "Tom Brown's School Days"?

"And then came that great event in his, as in every Rugby boy's life of that day—the first sermon from the Doctor.... The tall, gallant form, the kindling eye, the voice, now soft as the low notes of a flute, now clear and stirring as the call of the light infantry bugle, of him who stood there Sunday after Sunday, witnessing and pleading for his Lord, the King of righteousness, and love, and glory, with whose spirit he was filled, and in whose power he spoke....

"But what was it, after all, which seized and held these three hundred boys, dragging them out of themselves, willingly or unwillingly, for twenty minutes on Sunday afternoon? True, there always were boys scattered up and down the school, who in heart and head were worthy to hear and able to carry away the deepest and wisest words there spoken. But those were a minority always, generally a very small one....

"What was it that moved and held us, the rest of the three hundred scholars, childish boys, who feared the Doctor with all our hearts, and very little besides in heaven or earth; who thought more of our sets in the school than of the Church of Christ, and put the traditions of Rugby and the public opinion of boys in our daily life above the laws of God?

"We couldn't enter into half that we heard: we hadn't the knowledge of our own hearts or the knowledge of one another, and little enough of the faith, hope, and love needed to that end. But we listened, as all boys in their better moods will listen (ay, and men, too, for the matter of that), to a man whom we felt to be, with all his heart, and soul, and strength, striving against whatever was mean and unmanly and unrighteous in our little world."

Another pupil writes of these sermons: "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 think Arnold looked on as some of the worst boys in the school."

The influence at Rugby under Arnold was thoroughly Christian, though never sectarian. Harry East, the friend of Tom Brown (Thomas Hughes) went to Arnold to talk with him about being confirmed. "When I stuck," says East, "he lifted me, just as if I had been a little child; and he seemed to know all I'd felt, and to have gone through it all. And I burst out crying—more than I've done this five years; and he sat down by me and stroked my head; and I went blundering on.... And he wasn't shocked a bit, and didn't snub me, or tell me I was a fool ... and he didn't give me any cut-and-dried explanation. But when I'd done, he just talked a bit—I can hardly remember what he said yet; but it seemed to spread round me like healing, and strength, and light; and to bear me up and plant me on a rock, where I could hold my footing and fight for myself. I don't know what to do, I feel so happy."

While Arnold loved his boys, and felt the keenest interest in them, he did not forget his own mental requirements. "He is the best teacher of others," he said, "who is best taught himself; that which we know and love we cannot but communicate.... I hold that a man is only fit to teach so long as he is himself learning daily. If the mind once becomes stagnant, it can give no fresh draught to another mind; it is drinking out of a pond instead of from a spring.... I think it essential that I should not give up my own reading, as I always find any addition of knowledge to turn to account for the school in some way or other."

While his great desire for his boys was "moral thoughtfulness: the inquiring love of truth going along with the devoted love of goodness," he insisted on liveliness in his teachers: "It is a great matter to make these boys understand that liveliness is not folly and thoughtlessness. A schoolmaster's intercourse is with the young, the strong, and the happy; and he cannot get on with them unless in animal spirits he can sympathize with them, and show them that his thoughtfulness is not connected with selfishness or weakness.... He who likes boys has probably a daily sympathy with them."

One great secret of Arnold's success was that he loved his work. Not that he had not strong ambitions like other men. He said, "I believe that, naturally, I am one of the most ambitious men alive," and thought that "the three great objects of human ambition" which would attract him, 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 he felt that God had opened a great school to him, and that his path of duty was clearly marked out.

He grew tired, as do others, with what he felt to be very hard work, as all know who have tried teaching, and almost yearly took a journey on the Continent for rest and change.

"I hunger sometimes," he said, "for more time for writing; but I do not indulge the feeling, and on the other hand, I think my love of tuition rather grows upon me.... 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." No one ever studied the game more intently.

"Do you see those two boys walking together?" he said to an assistant master. "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."

He deprecated such long terms for boys or masters as twenty-one weeks, and wished for more "co-operation in our system of public education, including both the great schools and the universities."

Besides his teaching, Arnold did much writing of pamphlets and books. "I must write or die," was an expression which he often used. His pamphlet on "The Christian Duty of Conceding the Roman Catholic Claims," in 1828, whereby many of their civil and political disabilities were to be removed, created great bitterness of feeling against him. Sir Robert Peel, the leader of the House of Commons, was also fighting the battles for the Roman Catholics of Ireland, and probably saved England from a civil war by his advocacy. But toleration was as rare nearly a century ago as it is to-day, and Arnold soon received abuse from pulpit and pew.

He was the devoted friend of the poor and the laborers. In 1831 Arnold started the Englishmen's Register, a weekly newspaper, with the hope of telling the people "the evils that exist, and lead them, if I can, to their causes and their remedies."

"If the clergy would come forward," he writes to his beloved sister Susannah, "as one man, from Cumberland to Cornwall, exhorting peaceableness on the one side and justice on the other, denouncing the high rents and the game laws, and the carelessness which keeps the poor ignorant, and then wonders that they are brutal, I verily believe they might yet save themselves and the State." ...

To the Rev. Augustus Hare, he writes; "Unquestionably our aristocratic manners and habits have made us and the poor two distinct and unsympathizing bodies; and from 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."

He rejoiced that some of the leading manufacturers "are considering that their workmen have something else besides hands belonging to them, and are beginning to attend to the welfare of that something."

The Register soon died, because Arnold could not give all the time needed to conduct it, or the large amount of money necessary to start and carry on a weekly paper. His articles, however, about laborers were copied into the Sheffield Courant, and he was asked to continue his writings for its columns.

He was always a noble friend to the poor. At Laleham and Rugby he gave lectures in their interest, and was often seen in their homes. "I never knew such an humble man as the doctor," said the parish clerk at Laleham; "he comes and shakes us by the hand as if he was one of us." At his later home in Westmoreland a poor woman said, "He used to come into my house and talk to me as if I was a lady."

"Prayer and kindly intercourse with the poor," said Arnold, "are the two great safeguards of spiritual life; its more than food and raiment."

Dr. Arnold held that there "are but two things of vital importance," which Algernon Sidney calls Religion and Politics, "but which I would rather call our duties and affections toward God, and our duties and feelings toward men; science and literature are but a poor make-up for the want of these."

At one time Arnold was very anxious to start a journal, a portion of which should be devoted regularly to such subjects as history, statistics of different countries, and the like. "All instruction must be systematic," he said, "and it is this which the people want."

Without doubt Arnold was right. He could not then foresee how the newspapers of to-day, with their syndicate novels, travels, and biography, were to take the place of books in very many families. The life and times of Lincoln in the Century Magazine was a great step in the right direction. Sometime, it is to be hoped, our newspapers, instead of containing so much that is neither helpful nor lasting, will be the schools of the people, teaching history, political economy, and helpful biography.

While Arnold was, above all things, devoted to one central idea, "One name there is, and one alone—Jesus Christ, both God and man," yet he said, "I never wanted articles on religious subjects half so much as articles on common subjects written with a decidedly Christian tone. History and biography are far better vehicles of good, I think, than any direct comments on Scripture, or essays on evidences."

Arnold used to say, "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 misunderstanding, and they will think and talk about them, so that they had best be taught to think and talk rightly."

In 1833 Arnold published a pamphlet on Church Reform. He believed in a union of Church and State, but wished to bring Dissenters within the pale of the Established Church. He would give them the use of the churches for worship, with different hours for their services. He did not believe in the Apostolical succession, and deprecated all divisions among Christians. He longed to see all united on one foundation stone, the Saviour of men.

The Church Reform pamphlet went rapidly through four editions, and aroused a perfect whirlwind of invective. Arnold was denounced by the Established Church because too liberal; by Dissenters as not liberal enough; by Conservatives in politics as one revolutionary in doctrine and too thoroughly a friend of the people; by other educators as the unwise head of a new system which bade fair to destroy the old. The sale of his sermons—he had published two or three volumes—was stopped. Some of his friends even dropped their intercourse with him.

"The strong, great man was startled," says Dean Stanley, "but not moved by this continued outcry."

He resolved not to answer anybody through the newspapers. "All that is wanted," he said, "is to inspire firmness into the minds of those engaged in the conduct of the school, lest their own confidence should be impaired by a succession of attacks, which I suppose is unparalleled in the experience of schools."

When the controversy was at its height, he voted for the Liberal candidate, "foreseeing," as Stanley says, "as he must have done, the burst of indignation which followed."

"I should like," he said, "to write a book on 'The Theory of Tides,' the flood and ebb of parties. The English nation are like a man in a lethargy; they are never roused from their conservatism till mustard poultices are put to their feet."

He wrote in 1833, "May God grant to my sons, if they live to 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 them to the party of Christ against wickedness."

Two years later he wrote, "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."

Arnold went steadily forward with his scholarly work, bringing out in 1835 the last volume of his edition of Thucydides, and resumed his labor on his "Roman History." He thought "brevity and simplicity" two of the greatest merits which style can have, and applied these rules to his own accurate and thorough workmanship.

His eyes were often turned towards America, which he foresaw would solve many of the old world problems. To Jacob Abbott he wrote concerning "The Young Christian," "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, than 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."

Later he writes to his friend Chevalier Bunsen, "so beautifully good, so wise, and so noble-minded!" "I hear, both from India and the Mediterranean, the most delightful account 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."

While the storm raged around him, he enjoyed great peace and comfort in his home life. He romped with his children, gathered flowers with them, and climbed mountains like a boy. "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." He wrote Coleridge, "What men do in middle life without a wife and children to turn to, I cannot imagine; for I think the affections must be sadly checked and chilled, even in the best men, by their intercourse with people, such as one usually finds them in the world.... But with a home filled 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."

Archbishop Whately said of Arnold, "He was attached to his family as if he had no friends; to his friends as if he had no family; and to his country as if he had no friends or relations."

Dr. Arnold's married life was very happy. He wrote his "Dearest Mary" on their wedding-day; "How much of happiness and of cause for the deepest thankfulness is contained in the recollections of this day; for in the ten years that have elapsed since our marriage, there has been condensed, I suppose, as great a portion of happiness, with as little alloy, as ever marked any ten years of human existence."

To his servants he was extremely kind and considerate, as are all true gentlemen and well-bred women. "He was in the habit," says Stanley, "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."

In 1832 Arnold had purchased a small estate, Fox How, between Rydal and Ambleside, among the English lakes. "It is," he said, "with a mixed feeling of solemnity and tenderness that I regard our mountain nest, whose surpassing sweetness, I think I may safely say, adds a positive happiness to every one of my waking hours passed in it." He loved every tree, every rock, every flower, "as a child loves them." The three roads he often used to walk upon with his children he called "Old Corruption," an irregular, grassy path; "Bit-by-Bit Reform;" and "Radical Reform," a straight, good road.

The mountains were an especial delight. The impression they gave him, he said, "was never one of bleakness or wildness, but of a sort of paternal shelter and protection to the valley."

Here the work went on as elsewhere. "All the morning, till one o'clock," he wrote, "I used to sit in one corner of the drawing-room, not looking towards Fairfield lest I should be constantly tempted from my work, and there I worked on at the 'Roman History' and the 'Tudor Tables,' and Appius Claudius and Cincinnatus, and all the rest of them."

The "Roman History" was never finished. The third volume, published after his death, Archdeacon Hare thinks the first history which "has given anything like an adequate representation of the wonderful genius and noble character of Hannibal."

Dr. Arnold took an active part in the opposition to "The Tracts for the Times," when John Henry Newman went from the High Church Party of Oxford to the Roman Catholic Church, and became a cardinal. "I groan," he said, "over the divisions of the church, of all our evils I think the greatest ... that men should call themselves Roman Catholics, Church of England men, Baptists, Quakers, all sorts of appellations, forgetting that only glorious name of Christian, which is common to all, and a true bond of union."

In 1835 Arnold accepted a fellowship in the Senate of the new London University, with the hope that he could make it as he said, "Christian, yet not sectarian." He wished an examination in the Scriptures to be a part of the University work, but as the University from its charter was intended for all denominations, without regard to belief, he was overruled, and resigned his position. While he thanked Parliament "for having done away with distinctions between Christian and Christian"—Dissenters had been excluded heretofore from degrees at the universities because not belonging to the Established Church—"I would pray," he said, "that distinctions be kept up between Christians and non-Christians."

It is surprising to read that a man so broad and great as Dr. Arnold thought the Jews, because unbelievers, "have no claim whatever of political right,"—"no claim to become citizens, but by conforming to our moral law, which is the Gospel,"—and petitioned against the removal of their civil disabilities. Mr. Gladstone was also against the removal, but happily changed his opinions, and spoke in behalf of the Jews in 1847.

When the Chartists were demanding a people's charter with universal suffrage for men, and other reforms, Arnold was greatly moved. He began a correspondence with Carlyle, urging that a society be formed "for drawing public attention to the state of the laboring classes throughout the kingdom." He believed that the "upper classes would make sacrifices," if the real condition of the poor and the workers could be brought to their knowledge. "Men do not think of the fearful state in which we are living," he said; and he did not despair of a remedy, "even though it is the solution of the most difficult problem ever yet proposed to man's wisdom, and the greatest triumph over selfishness ever yet required of his virtue."

We in America are facing the same problems; and there was never more need for the "upper classes to make sacrifices," and live unselfish lives for the good of their country, than now. We need to keep ever before us the Bible message, "For none of us liveth to himself."

Arnold believed rightly in each one doing his share of the world's work and duties. "There is no earthly thing," he said, "more mean and despicable in my mind than an English gentleman destitute of all sense of his responsibilities and opportunities, and only revelling in the luxuries of our high civilization, and thinking himself a great person."

He wrote to a pupil who had become a physician, "It is a real pleasure to me to find that you are taking steadily to a profession, without which I scarcely see how a man can live honestly. I use the term 'profession' in rather a large sense ... a definite field of duty, which the nobleman has as much as the tailor, but which he has not, who, having an income large enough to keep him from starving, hangs about upon life, merely following his own caprices and fancies."

Again he writes to a friend, "I would far rather send a boy to Van Diemen's Land, where he must work for his bread, than send him to Oxford to live in luxury, without any desire in his mind to avail himself of his advantages." As the years went by, the spirit of opposition against Arnold seemed to die out, and the school at Rugby gained continually in numbers and influence. He was presented to the Queen; he went up to Oxford to see degrees conferred upon Wordsworth and Bunsen; he published more volumes of sermons—six in all—and two volumes of his admirable "Roman History."

In 1841 he was appointed by Lord Melbourne, Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, the chair being made vacant by the death of Dr. Nares. This gave him great pleasure, and with enthusiasm he began to prepare his lectures.

He gave his first lecture Dec. 2, 1841, in the "theatre," the usual lecture-rooms in the Clarendon Buildings being too small for the hundreds who crowded to hear him. "It was an audience," says Dean Stanley, "unprecedented in the range of academical memory."

He designed to give a yearly course of eight lectures, beginning with the fourteenth century. Some of his lectures were to be biographical: "The life and times of Pope Gregory, or the Great," Charlemagne, Alfred, Dante, and "the noblest and holiest of monarchs, Louis IX."

He wrote Coleridge before going to Oxford, "If I do go up, many things, I can assure you, have been in my thoughts, which I wished gradually to call men's attention to; one in particular, which seems to me a great scandal—the debts contracted by the young men, and their backwardness in paying them. I think that no part of this evil is to be ascribed to the tradesmen, because so completely are the tradesmen at the mercy of the undergraduates, that no man dares refuse to give credit; if he did, his shop would be abandoned."

Arnold still continued his work at Rugby, remaining in part because two of his sons were being educated there. He was also making final arrangements for an edition of St. Paul's Epistles.

The last lecture of his first year at Oxford, June 2, 1842, was abandoned for the time, on account of a brief, but sudden illness. June 5 he preached his farewell sermon to the Rugby boys, before the vacation; and Friday, June 10, was the public-day for school speeches.

Saturday he was in high spirits, taking his usual walk and bath, and conversing with his guests on social and historical topics. In the evening he gave a supper to some of the higher classes of the school.

He wrote in his diary that evening, June 11, 1842: "The day after to-morrow is my birthday, if I am permitted to live to see it—my forty-seventh birthday since my birth. How large a portion of my life on earth is already passed.... But above all, let me mind my own personal work—to keep myself pure and zealous and believing—laboring to do God's will, yet not anxious that it should be done by me rather than by others, if God disapproves of my doing it."

Between five and six o'clock on Sunday morning he awoke with a sharp pain across his chest. He lay with his hands clasped and his eyes raised upwards, while he repeated, "And Jesus said unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed."

Against Arnold's wish, his wife sent for a physician. Meantime she read to him in the Prayer Book, the fifty-first psalm. The twelfth verse, "O give me the comfort of thy help again, and establish me with thy free spirit," he repeated after her very earnestly.

The physician soon came, and Arnold, asking the cause of the pain, was told that it was spasm of the heart.

"Is it generally fatal?" asked Arnold. "Yes, I am afraid it is," was the reply.

Soon after the doctor left the house for medicine, and the son Thomas entered the room. "Thank God, Tom," said Arnold, "for giving me this pain; I have suffered so little pain in my life, that I feel it is very good for me; now God has given it to me, and I do so thank Him for it."

His son said, "I wish, dear papa, we had you at Fox How." He made no reply, but smiled tenderly upon the boy and his mother.

The doctor soon came; and as he was dropping the laudanum into a glass, Arnold asked what medicine it was. On being told, he replied, "Ah, very well."

In a moment there was a convulsive struggle, then a few deep gasps, and the work of the great teacher was over.

Five of their nine children were waiting for their father at Fox How, to celebrate his forty-seventh birthday, and returned to Rugby for the burial. The news brought bewilderment and deep sorrow to Rugby, to Oxford, to London, and indeed to the whole of England.

On the following Friday he was buried in the chancel, immediately under the communion-table. How many of us Americans have stood by that sacred spot, and remembered how one good man can bring honor to his work and nation!

Out of gratitude for his services in the cause of education, a public subscription was at once started. The money subscribed was used to erect his monument in Rugby Chapel, Chevalier Bunsen writing an epitaph for it in imitation of those on the tombs of the Scipios, and of the early Christian inscriptions; and for scholarships, first to be used by his sons, and afterwards for the promotion of general study at Rugby, and history at Oxford.

WENDELL PHILLIPS.