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 for which his various faculties were given, the element in which his nature is ordained to develop itself, and in which his progressive advance toward heaven is to lie. Hence, each pupil felt assured of Arnold's sympathy in his own particular growth and character of talent; in striving to cultivate his own gifts, in whatever 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 labor.

His humility was very 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 ignorant. But this generated no conceit; the example before his eyes 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. He could not find comfort, in the presence of such reality, in any shallow knowledge.

There was then, as afterward, 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 distinctly 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 convictions 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 lessons on hand; and it was only when we 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 Laleham, 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?-Life and Correspondence, American Edition, pp. 35-37.

Touching the work of a private tutor, Arnold wrote after leaving it :

I know it has a bad name, but my wife and I always happened to be fond of it, and, if I were to leave Rugby for no demerit 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 vigor 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 not. 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, and thinking of how much privacy

and how much society 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 interest, 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.-Life and Correspondence, p. 33.

The labor at Laleham had not been without glimpses of a larger sphere. Arnold had but begun upon it, when a mastership in one of the public schools was proposed to him, but he declined coming forward. Years later, he actually offered himself as a candidate for a historical professorship at the London University. But his destined battle-field lay elsewhere. The ninth year at Laleham was passing, when Arnold became a candidate for the head-mastership of Rugby school.

He assumed no arrogant position. "Of its being a great deal more lucrative," he wrote, "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." A month after, he was more confident. "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 elements which, under the blessing of the Spirit of all holiness and wisdom, might produce fruit even to life eternal." From this elevation of feeling he did not fall while the election was pending, nor after it was decided in his favor. "For the labor I care nothing," he writes to a friend who had congratulated him on his success, "if God gives me health and strength, as He has for the last eight years. But whether I shall be able to make the school what I wish to make it, I do not mean wholly or perfectly, but in some degree, that is, an instrument of God's glory, and of the everlasting good of those who come to it,that, indeed, is an awful anxiety." "I would hope," he says to another friend, "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." As weeks pass, and the time for repairing to his post draws nearer, the work before him grows in solemnity. "With regard," he writes, "to reforms at Rugby, give me credit, I must beg of 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 imperfect state of boyhood, they are not susceptible of Christian principles in their full development upon their practice, and I suspect that a low standard of morals in 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 may be done, and I should be most unwilling to undertake the business, if I did not trust that much might be done." "You know," he says to another correspondent, as if in deprecation of exaggerated expectations from his new labors, "you know that I never ran down public schools in the lump, but grieved that their exceeding capabilities were not turned to better account; and, if I find myself unable in time to mend what I consider 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." Thus strengthened by humility as well as by zeal, Arnold prepared himself for the responsibilities of the future.

Pause upon the expressions of the preceding paragraph; review them, group them, and take the sum of them, as they came from Arnold himself. Should we doubt, if we knew no more of him, that he had proposed what few teachers propose, and accomplished what few teachers accomplish? Is he not, as he stands out in bold relief through those words of his own,-is he not, in almost every point of view, an example to men in his position, appointed to places of eminence and of care? He does not gird himself for his duties as if he had nothing more to do than his predecessors had wrought; nor does he talk of reforms that he is to achieve without respect for the works of those before him. The true reformer appears in him, recognizing that there is something to reform, something, therefore, for which to honor the past, as well as something to change in serving the present and the future. Nor is this all. The eyes of the reformer are upon a lofty object. It is not to agitate, not to reproach, not to destroy, that he is arming himself; but to purify and to elevate, in love of God and in love of man. Look upon him, ye who are called to great charges, and learn of him. Look upon him, teachers,—whose charges are greater than yours?-and, if you can not find a work like his to do, or a spirit like his to do it in, let it alone; be true enough to let it altogether alone.

The foundation of Rugby school was laid in the will of Lawrence Sheriff, "grocer," ," "servant to the Lady Elizabeth, and sworn unto her Grace," in the year 1567. A second instrument directed the trustees

under the will "to cause to be builded a fayre and convenient schoole house," whereof the master is to be "an honest, discreete, and learned man, being a master of art." It was not until nearly a century later, (1653,) that the bequests of the founder were secured to the school in such wise as to complete its establishment. Thenceforward, the institution grew apace; its members increased, its funds multiplied, until, at the time of Arnold's connection with it, (1828,) it was one of the most distinguished public schools in England.

Arnold holds the following language in one of his sermons :—

There is, or there ought to be, something 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 individual 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 responsibility imposed upon him, which I wish that we more considered.-Life and Correspondence, p. 74.

But to obtain a more definite idea of the school, we will take an account from the pen of Arnold, in an article for the Quarterly Journal of Education, in 1834.

Rugby school was originally a simple grammar school, designed for the benefit of the town of Rugby and its neighborhood. Any person who has resided for the space of two years in the town of Rugby, or at any place in the county of Warwick within ten miles of it, or even in the adjacent counties of Leicester and Northampton to the distance of five miles from it, may send his sons to be educated at the school, without paying any thing whatever for their instruction. But if a parent lives out of the town of Rugby, his son must then lodge at one of the regular boarding-houses of the school; in which case, the expenses of his board are the same as those incurred by a boy not on the foundation.

Boys placed at the school in this manner are called foundationers, and their number is not limited. In addition to these, there are 260 boys, not on the foundation; and this number is not allowed to be exceeded.

The number of masters is ten, consisting of a head-master and nine assistants. The boys are divided into nine, or practically into ten classes, succeeding each other in the following order, beginning from the lowest first form, second form, third form, lower remove, fourth form, lower fifth, fifth and sixth. It should be observed, to account for the anomalies of this nomenclature, that the name of sixth form has been long associated with the idea of the highest class in all the great public schools of England; and, therefore, when more than six forms are wanted they are designated by other names, in order to secure the magic name of sixth to the highest form in the school. In this the practice of our schools is not without a very famous precedent; for the Roman augurs, we are told, would not allow Tarquinius Priscus to exceed the ancient and sacred number of three, in the centuries of Equites; but there was no objection made to his doubling the number of them in each century, and making in each an upper and a lower division, which were practically as distinct as two centuries. There is no more wisdom in disturbing an old association for no real benefit, than in sparing it when it stands in the way of any substantial advantage.

Into these ten classes the boys are distributed in a threefold division, according to their proficiency in classical literature, in arithmetic and mathematics, and in French. There is an exception made, however, in favor of the sixth form, which consists in all the three divisions of exactly the same individuals. All the rest of the boys are classed in each of the divisions without any reference to their rank in the other two; and thus it sometimes happens that a boy is in the fifth form in

the mathematical division, while he is only in the third or fourth in the classical; or, on the other hand, that he is in a very low form in the French division, while he is in a high one in the classical and mathematical. The masters also have different forms in the three different divisions. The masters of the higher classical forms may teach the lower forms in mathematics or French; and the masters of the higher forms in either of those two departments may have the care of the lower forms in the classical arrangement. Each half year is divided into two equal periods, called language time and history time. The books read in these two periods vary in several instances,-the poets and orators being read principally during the language time, and history and geography being chiefly studied during the history time. This will be more clearly seen from the following table (see page 554) of the general work of the school for a whole year.

Every year, immediately before the Christmas holidays, there is a general examination of the whole school in the work that has been done during the preceding half-year. A class-paper is printed containing the names of those boys who distinguish themselves; and in order to gain a high place on this paper, it is usual for the boys to read some book in one or more of their several branches of study, in addition to what they have read with the masters in school. In this manner they have an opportunity of reading any work to which their peculiar taste may lead them, and of rendering it available to their distinction in the school. There are exercises in composition, in Greek and Latin prose, Greek and Latin verse, and English prose, as in other large classical schools. In the subjects given for original composition in the higher forms, there is a considerable variety. Historical descriptions of any remarkable events, geographical descriptions of countries, imaginary speeches and letters, supposed to be spoken or written on some great question or under some memorable circumstances; etymological accounts of words in different languages, and criticisms on different books, are found to offer an advantageous variety to the essays on moral subjects to which boys' prose composition has sometimes been confined.

Three exhibitioners are elected every year by the trustees of the school, on the report of two examiners appointed respectively by the vice-chancellors of Oxford and Cambridge. These exhibitions are of the value of £60 a year, and may be held for seven years at any college at either university, provided the exhibitioner continues to reside at college so long; for they are vacated immediately by non-residence.

One scholar is also elected every year by the masters, after an examination held by themselves. The scholarship is of the value of £25 a year, and is confined to boys under fourteen and a half at the time of their election. It is tenable for six years, if the boy who holds it remains so long at Rugby. But as the funds for these scholarships arise only from the subscriptions of individuals, they are not to be considered as forming necessarily a permanent part of the school foundation.Miscellaneous Works, pp. 341-48.

The foregoing description, written six years after Arnold became headmaster, and eight years before his death, represents the school in a transition state,-his reforms begun but not completed. "You need not fear my reforming furiously," he wrote to one of his nearest friends, at the very time he was entering upon his charge, "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 may be my constant labor 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 comparable to it. To do it, however imperfectly, would far more than repay twenty years of labor and anxiety." No purpose of reform could be loftier; none, therefore, could be at once more trying and more sustaining. Arnold appreciated all the difficulty of his undertaking.