to acquire that facility of Greek and Latin composition which is indispensable in such an office. Of mathematics his knowledge seems never to have extended beyond the first six books of Euclid. History and geography were his favourite studies; and the situation of his home, so near to Portsmouth, at once quickened his curiosity respecting foreign nations, and gave him that lively interest in every thing relating to war which shews itself in his Roman History, in singular contrast with the peaceful occupations of his life. In Lent Term, 1811, he was elected a scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford; and, in 1814, on taking his degree of B. A., became a first-class man in Litteræ Humaniores. Respecting his character and manners in this period of his life, Mr. Justice Coleridge, his contemporary at Corpus, and to the end of Arnold's life his friend and correspondent, has made a very interesting communication to his biographer. The following summary will shew how decidedly all the great points of his intellectual and moral character had already displayed themselves :

"At the commencement a boy-and at the close retaining, not ungracefully, much of boyish spirits, frolic, and simplicity; in mind vigorous, active, clearsighted, industrious, and daily accumulating and assimilating treasures of knowledge; not averse to poetry, but delighting rather in dialectics, philosophy, and history, with less of imaginative than reasoning power; in argument bold almost to presumption, and vehement; in temper easily roused to indignation, yet more easily appeased and entirely free from bitterness; fired, indeed, by what he deemed ungenerous or unjust to others, rather than by any sense of personal wrong; somewhat too little deferential to authority, yet without any real inconsistency loving what was good and great in antiquity the more ardently and reverently because it was ancient; a casual or unkind observer might have pronounced him somewhat too pugnacious in conversation and too positive. I have given, I believe, the true explanation; scarcely any thing would have pained him more than to be convinced that he had been guilty of want of modesty, or of deference where it was justly due; no one thought these virtues of more sacred obligation. In heart, if I can speak with confidence of any of the friends of my youth, I can of his, that it was devout and pure, simple, sincere, affectionate and faithful."--Vol. I. pp. 22, 23.

We see here the elements of a noble character; even its asperities carry the promise of future excellence; as fruits of a harsh flavour yield the most generous wine, when they have passed through the process of fermentation and refining.

In 1815, he was elected a Fellow of Oriel College. Copleston had just before become its provost; but he only carried out the principle which his predecessor, Dr. Eveleigh, had introduced, of throwing open the competition for fellowships to the whole University, and choosing the ablest among the candidates,* and thus secured to that College the superiority in talent for which it soon became distinguished. Arnold appears to have owed his election in some measure to the discernment of Whately," who pointed out to the other electors the great capability of growth which he believed to be involved in the crudities of the youthful candidate's exercises, which, even in points where he was inferior to his competitors, indicated an approaching superiority." (I. p. 26.) The system of open election had assembled within the walls of Oriel some of the most remarkable men whom Oxford has pro

See an interesting note by Mr. Newman in Huber's English Universities, Vol. II. (2) p. 513.

duced in our day,-Copleston, Davison, (author of Discourses on Prophecy and the Origin and Intent of Sacrifice,) Whately, Keble, Hawkins and Hampden. Newman and Pusey were added to it just after the time when Arnold quitted the University, the latter being elected into his vacant Fellowship. Whatever theological movement the University has displayed within the last quarter of a century has originated with these men of Oriel; and very curious it is to observe what different streams have issued from the same fountain. We hoped to have obtained from Mr. Stanley's Memoir some glimpse into the interior of this remarkable society, and especially to have learnt what definite influence was exercised on Arnold's mind by his four years' residence at Oriel. But we have been entirely disappointed, and this whole period is nearly a blank. A letter of the year 1817, is the sole record of these four years (p. 56); and we learn little from it except that he was hesitating between the Law and the Church, though strongly leaning to the latter, and only deterred from entering it by some conscientious scruples. Yet, according to his biographer, it was the interval between the end of his under-graduate career in Oxford and his entrance upon life, in which a change and growth of character took place, more marked and more important than at any subsequent period of his life. Mr. Stanley could not, of course, supply this deficiency from his personal knowledge of Dr. Arnold; but considering who were his contemporaries at Oriel, we do wonder that none of them should have told us how he appeared to them in that unreserved communion which must have existed between them as Fellows of the same College. He passed his time partly in the duties of a tutor, partly in a course of extensive historical reading in the libraries of Oxford; and many schemes, abstracts and sketches remain, in which the germs of ideas subsequently expanded in his works appear.

His choice of a profession was hastened by the attachment which he had formed to the sister of an early school and college friend; he settled at Laleham, near Staines, in 1819, and there spent the next nine years of his life, taking seven or eight young men as private pupils in preparation for the Universities. He had been ordained deacon in 1818, and till he left Laleham never advanced further in the order of the hierarchy. The doubts which appear to have painfully occupied his mind did not relate to subscription to articles of faith generally; for in regard to this he seems early to have thought, that the same general adherence to the doctrines of the Church and preference of its worship, which justified a layman in declaring himself a member of it, justified a clergyman in the signature of its Articles.* But he had doubts respecting the scriptural evidence of the doctrine of the Trinity. The metaphysical difficulties of the question he more easily got over, taking, like his friend Whately,† the Sabellian solution of the perplexing dilemma which it offers. So at least we think ourselves justified in inferring,

* Vol. II. pp. 176, 208.

See his remarks on the meaning of Person as applied to the Godhead, Appendix to Logic, No. xvii.

His long delay in taking priest's orders arose from his doubts whether the Epistle to the Hebrews were written by St. Paul. He stated these doubts to Dr. Howley, who did not object to ordain him. Afterwards he seems to have acquiesced in the common opinion. Vol. II. p. 136.

from his speaking of the Holy Spirit (I. p. 50) as the "third relation of the Deity to man." We can readily conceive that at first he missed the evidence of the doctrine of the Trinity in scripture, and should have been glad to know where he afterwards found it. But on this point neither his letters nor his biography give us any information. Mr. Justice Coleridge thinks his state of feeling was morbidly painful in regard to this question; Arnold opened his mind upon it both to him and to another friend, a Fellow of Oriel. We do not find that either of these, however, helped him to any new proofs from scripture; Coleridge advised him "to pause in his inquiries, to pray earnestly for help and light from above, and turn himself more strongly than ever to the practical duties of a holy life (I. p. 21), and the consequence was peace of mind and settled conviction." Now help and light to understand a question of scriptural evidence, for such this was with Arnold, must have been the clearing up of some difficulty in scriptural language, the illumination of some passage of Holy Writ, in which he was enabled to perceive a revelation of the Trinity which had escaped him before; and therefore we are the more earnestly desirous to know how he obtained his ultimate conviction. Of one thing we feel confident, that he did not follow the advice of the other friend, "to put down his doubts by main force whenever they arose," and that he had sufficient integrity and strength of character to have sacrificed his most cherished prospects in life, rather than thus to have stifled the voice of conscience.

At Laleham, Arnold entered with all his characteristic ardour into his new office of a schoolmaster, and gained the experience in dealing with the youthful mind which enabled him afterwards to fill the wider sphere in which he was placed at Rugby, so efficiently. This was, perhaps, the portion of his life in which he enjoyed the most pure and tranquil happiness. The influences of married life and the parental relation called forth the tenderness of his nature, and softened away the harshness which lay upon the surface, and which the monastic life of the University has no tendency to remove. He delighted in the natural scenery, simple as it was, by which he was surrounded, on the banks of the Thames; he preached frequently in the parish church and visited the humbler parishioners; and while he thus found abundant occupation for his affections in the circle of his own duties, he had not begun to take that painful interest in public affairs which he manifested in later years. We have the advantage of learning his mode of managing his pupils from the communication of Mr. Price, who was himself a short time in his family at Laleham, and for many years one of his most confidential friends and coadjutors as an Under-master at Rugby.

"The most remarkable thing which struck me at once on joining the Laleham circle was, the wonderful healthiness of tone and feeling which prevailed in it. Every thing about me I immediately found to be most real; it was a place where a new-comer at once felt that a great and earnest work was going forward. Dr. Arnold's 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. Hence, an indescribable zest was communicated to a young man's feeling about life; a strange joy came over him on discovering that he had the means of being useful, and thus of being happy; and a deep respect and ardent attachment sprang up towards him who had taught him thus to value life and his ownself, and his work and mission in this

world. All this was founded on the breadth and comprehensiveness of Arnold's character, as well as its striking truth and reality; on the unfeigned regard he had for work of all kinds, and the sense he had of its value both for the complex aggregate of society and the growth and perfection of the individual. Thus, pupils of the most different natures were keenly stimulated; none felt that he was left out, or that, because he was not endowed with large powers of mind, there was no sphere open to him in the honourable pursuit of usefulness. This wonderful power of making all his pupils respect themselves, and of awakening in them a consciousness of the duties that God had assigned to them personally, and of the consequent reward each should have of his labours, was one of Arnold's most characteristic features as a trainer of youth; he possessed it eminently at Rugby; but, if I may trust my own vivid recollections, he had it quite as remarkably at Laleham. His hold over all his pupils I know 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-whose work was healthy, 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."Vol. I. pp. 41, 42.

"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 lesson on hand; and it was only when we all 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 ?”—Vol. I. p. 43.

In this power of gaining an influence over the young, and inducing them to exert themselves, by the example of a superior mind, earnestly and conscientiously engaged in working out the great work of life, the late Dr. Carpenter more resembled Dr. Arnold, as he is here described, than any man whom we have known. There were many points of resemblance between them, with some striking differences; the great success of each as an instructor was mainly owing to the belief, irresistibly impressed on every one who came within their reach, of their perfect sincerity and their earnest interest in the welfare of their pupils. At Laleham, Dr. Arnold devoted his studies chiefly to philology and history, preparing his edition of Thucydides, and furnishing articles in Roman history to the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, to which publication several of his old associates at Oxford were contributors. It was in 1825 that he first became acquainted with Niebuhr's History of Rome, through the recommendation of his friend, Julius Charles Hare; and imperfect as the work was, in the form in which it then existed, it opened to him such new views in Roman history, that he was eager to make the English public acquainted with an author then wholly unknown among us. He wrote an article in the Quarterly Review of that year (XXXII. p. 67), designed chiefly to make known his discoveries. Our

readers may wonder to find Dr. Arnold, who had already abandoned the Toryism he had acquired at Oxford, among the contributors to a journal which has always signalized itself by hostility to every thing liberal. But there was at this time a brief gleam of candour and gentlemanly feeling in its management; its editor was Mr. Coleridge, whose name we have already mentioned more than once. Candour and gentlemanly feeling, however, did not suit the taste of the readers of the Quarterly; the editor was speedily changed; and when Hare and Thirlwall published their Translation of the improved edition of Niebuhr, it was made the occasion of a virulent attack on him and them in the same work. We need not add that Arnold never again furnished an article to its pages.

After nine years spent at Laleham, the increase of his family induced him to look out for some more ample means of supporting them, and he was strongly urged by his friends to offer himself for the mastership of one of our great schools. Rugby became vacant in August 1827, and, though late in his application, and personally unknown to all the Trustees, he was chosen out of a large body of candidates. He received priest's orders in June 1828, and the degree of D.D. in the same year, and after the summer vacation entered on the office, in which his last fourteen years were spent. It was here that the most arduous struggles of his life arose, that his faculties were most severely tasked, his moral and religious principles most painfully tried; but it was here also that he acquired for himself an imperishable name among the improvers of education in England. Such national services are above all others expansive and self-multiplying, and a life would have been well spent which had produced no other fruit.

It had been predicted by Dr. Hawkins, now Provost of Oriel, in a testimonial which appears to have turned the scale in Arnold's favour, "that if he were elected to the Head-mastership of Rugby, he would change the face of education through all the public schools of England." He probably knew how much his friend thought that they required a change, and trusted to the energy of his character to carry it out, and shame others into an imitation of his example. We might be suspected of some sectarian bias were we to attempt to describe the state of morals and religion in our public schools at this time, and we shall therefore quote the letter of Dr. Moberly, the Head Master of Winchester, as the best proof of the extent of the evil with which Dr. Arnold had to contend.

"Possibly," he writes, after describing his own recollections as a schoolboy, "other schools may have been less deep in these delinquencies than Winchester; I believe that in many respects they were. But I did not find, on going to the University, that I was under disadvantages as compared with those who came from other places; on the contrary, the tone of young men at the University, whether they came from Winchester, Eton, Rugby, Harrow, or wherever else, was universally irreligious. A religious under-graduate was very rare, very much laughed at when he appeared; and I think I may confidently say, hardly to be found among public-school men; or, if this be too strongly said, hardly to be found, except in cases where private and domestic training, or good dispositions, had prevailed over the school habits and tendencies. A most singular and striking change has come upon our public schools-a change too great for any person to appreciate adequately, who has not known them in both these times. This change is undoubtedly part of a general improvement of our generation in respect of piety and reve