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.
[Illustration: WENDELL PHILLIPS.]