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While Dr. Arnold regarded personal honour as the best check on his boys, he was by no means blind to the importance of having the right men as assistant masters. "What I want," he wrote, "is a man who is a Christian and a gentleman, an active man, and one who has common sense and understands boys.... It is my great object to get here a society of intelligent, gentlemanly, and active men who may permanently keep up the character of the school, and make it 'vile damnum', if I were to break my neck to-morrow." His object was attained. He collected around him a staff of masters who have carried on his system and have made it permanent. Some have regretted the fact of Dr. Arnold's early death. To his own family and friends his death was indeed untimely, but so far as his own fame was concerned, his death is no more to be deplored than that of Nelson in the hour of victory. What could length of days have brought to Thomas Arnold? A bishopric-possibly the Primacy of England. It is, however, by no means certain that he would have been as great a bishop as he was a schoolmaster. Fortunate in many things, Rugby's Head Master was fortunate in the manner of his leave-taking. He died at the zenith of his fame.

As you leave the Chapel, you look up at the West Window which has been placed there in memory of Tom Hughes. No Old Boy ever better merited honour in his School Chapel. Tom Brown's Schooldays is the best work of schoolboy fiction; with the rest nowhere. Dr. Arnold's most lasting and most popular monument is neither to be found in Westminster Abbey, nor in the School Chapel, nor in the School Library, nor even in Stanley's Life, but in the pages of Tom Brown. The thinking man will find his Arnold in Stanley's Life, but "the man in the street" turns to his Tom Brown. Exaggeration is not and cannot be the divine afflatus, but it is often mistaken for it. Mr. Hughes tells us that "the hardest thing in the world for a Brown to bear" is for anyone to agree with him in everything. Many have said that there is too much preaching in the book. The author in his preface to the

1 Stanley's Life (8th Edition), Vol. i., p. 88.

sixth edition fully admits the charge, and glories in it. Dr. Arnold came to Rugby in 1828 and died in harness in 1842. His rule did not cover a gentle or devotional stage in the development of our public schools. Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Charterhouse, Winchester and Westminster-all tell the same story. That was a rough age in which our schoolboys were not attentive to the forms of religion and too often oblivious to its spirit. Therefore those who did strive after higher things, may have talked too much of religion. Moreover, if a public-schoolboy has any grit, he is essentially an extremist. You must not expect moderation from him either in his religious opinions (if he has any), or in his love of cricket or of work. 'Thorough" is his watchword. The wise advice of Talleyrand-Pas trop de zèle-is foreign in spirit as in language. The same idea is more beautifully expressed by Horace-1

"Vim temperatum Di quoque provehunt

In majus."

(The force that wisdom tempers, Heaven promotes.)

-but this is a truth that the intellect of the average boy fails to grasp. This was even more the case with our fathers and ourselves than with our sons. If illustrations are wanted of the spirit of exaggeration or fanaticism or priggism (call it what you will) rampant among the Rugby boys of Dr. Arnold's time, they will be found in the letters of of Clough. Take, for instance, the letter he wrote when head of the School House (1836), to his friend J. N. Simpkinson (afterwards "Simmy", an assistant master at Harrow): "I verily believe my whole being is soaked through with the wishing and hoping and striving to do the school good, or rather to keep it up and hinder it from falling in this, I do think, very critical time, so that all my cares and affections and conversation, thought, words and deeds look to that involuntarily. I am afraid you will be inclined to think this cant." In a letter to the same friend he

2

1 Horace Carm. Lib., iii., Ode 4.

2 Clough's Remains, Vol. i., p. 68.

speaks of the Old Rugbeians (Stanley etc.) at Oxford as "a little leaven leavening the whole lump." Those who criticize Tom Brown's "preachy" tone forget that in the Arnold days a boy to be religious had to be a Daniel. He had either to assert himself, or "to bow his head in the house of Rimmon", a subject which Tom and Arthur, and even the manly East, seem never tired of discussing. It is unfortunate if a boy has to separate himself from his companions, as such separation must tend to develop a prig, but there are times when such a step is unavoidable. Contemporaneously with Dr. Arnold, Dr. Moberly and Charles Wordsworth held sway at Winchester, but though they were High Churchmen, very similar complaints were made of their pupils as of Dr. Arnold's. Winchester, as well as Rugby, was then regarded by outsiders as a school for prigs. The only difference between them was that Dr. Moberly's teaching made premature High Churchmen, while Dr. Arnold's made them liberal Churchmen. From the preface to Tom Brown it is clear that Tom Hughes regarded priggism as a necessary stage in a schoolboy's development. It certainly is not a necessary stage in the growth of a Rugby or Winchester boy of the present day. Whether Old Rugbeians or not, we honour Tom Hughes. As Mr. Goschen happily expressed it-"He is a hero without heroics." He devoted his life to the cause of public schools and proved himself their most successful recruiting sergeant. Thanks to Tom Brown's Schooldays, hundreds of parents have sent their boys to public schools, who would not have done so, had that book never been written. On the Rugby Speech Day of 1899 the Archbishop of Canterbury unveiled the statue of Tom Hughes. The statue was the work, and a fine piece of work, of Mr. Thomas Brock, R. A., and stands in front of the Museum, overlooking the close. Out of goodwill to Rugby and to the memory of Tom Hughes, the artist executed it on very generous terms. The hero worship of Tom Hughes for his old chief was referred to by the Primate with marked appreciation, and the occasion was quite as much one for honouring the memory of Tom Hughes's master as of Dr. Arnold's pupil. The speeches sent us all back to our Tom Brown. That

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book is a manual for hero worship! "What a sight it is," broke in the master, "the Doctor as a ruler! Perhaps ours is the only little corner of the British Empire which is thoroughly, wisely, and strongly ruled just now." Did Carlyle ever read Tom Brown? If he did, this sentence should have come up to his standard. Oliver Cromwell could not have aroused more enthusiasm. It is good and pleasant to see loyalty and devotion such as Tom Hughes's to Dr. Arnold, but there is such a task as keeping the balance of our enthusiasms even. Dr. Arnold was the Agamemnon of Rugby, but as Horace has taught us as boys, there were kings before Agamemnon, only they lacked what Dr. Arnold had-their vates sacer, their Tom Brown.

There were Henry Holyoake, Thomas Crossfield, Thomas James, and John Wooll. Justice to his predecessors is not detraction of Dr. Arnold. Mr. Hughes tells us that Arnold “found School and School-house in a state of monstrous license." In a letter to a friend, written soon after his election, Dr. Arnold speaks of his "generally favourable impression" of the School. "The earliest letters from Rugby," Stanley tells us, "express an unfeigned pleasure in what he found existing." Dr. Butler of Shrewsbury, writing in 1835 to the Rev. B. W. Kennedy, then a master at Harrow, says: "I don't know what you mean by Arnold's reform of Rugby. I know he increased the numbers much; and I hear that they are now considerably on the decline again, but I do not know anything more." Happily, at Rugby there were not only kings before Agamemnon, but there have been kings since Agamemnon. Tait, Temple, Jex Blake, Percival and the present Head, Dr. James, form a galaxy of Head Hasters difficult to match and impossible to beat. They have raised the School to a pitch of prosperity, both in numbers and efficiency of instruction, which it had not before attained. For the first time in its history Rugby in 1899 carried off two Balliol Scholarships. Never could an Old Rugbeian look forward with greater confidence to the future of his school than he can now.

1 This young master was, in the opinion of Sir Alexander Arbuthnot, intended for George Edward Cotton, afterwards Bishop of Calcutta.

CHAPTER XV.

RUGBY (continued).

IN Dr. Arnold's time when you had seen the Old Quadrangle and the Chapel, you had seen the whole school. The present School buildings have quite outgrown their old limits. In Tom Brown's days one side of what is now the New Quadrangle was occupied by shops. These have long since disappeared, and their place has been taken by Chemical Class Rooms. These rooms are now thought too small, and will be replaced by larger ones. Thus the work of improvement is handed down from one generation to another. You cross the road from the School House and enter the Physical Science Rooms. No school in England possesses a better or completer set. Rugby has long enjoyed an honourable preeminence among Public Schools in the matter of its scientific teaching. "Rugby School," said the Schools Commission of 1864 in their General Report, "is the only one among those constituting the present inquiry in which Physical Science is a regular part of the curriculum." They also reported favourably on the teaching of history at Rugby, "and perhaps Harrow."

The late Head Master, Dr. Percival, did all in his power to encourage music in the school. Under him an admirable music room was built, with little rooms leading out of it in which each boy practises his own instrument. The late Dr. Troutbeck, the able translator of all Novello's libretti, is an Old Rugbeian. He was Precentor of Manchester when Sir F. Bridge was Organist there, and then found himself Precentor of Westminster Abbey, with an Old Rugbeian as Dean, who had been a Rugby master of his own time, and Sir F. Bridge as Organist. Sir F. Bridge was not at Rugby, but he sent his son there. Then there