"And to this I find myself coming more and more. I care less and less for information, more and more for the pure exercise of the mind, for answering a question concisely and comprehensively, for showing a command of language, delicacy of taste, a comprehensiveness of thought, and power of combination.” 1 The relations of a head master to a governing body are among the most difficult and delicate concernments of his life. The right of governors and trustees to control the general administration of the school and of its funds is undoubted; and deference, courtesy, and full information are their due from the master to whom they have confided the actual internal government of the school. But in Arnold's view the delimitation of power and responsibility should be very clearly marked. Fuller has said of the good. schoolmaster, that "he is and will be known to be an absolute monarch in his school." And this is indeed the only condition on which a high-minded man, conscious of power and of a clear purpose, could accept a head-mastership. The trustees have always their remedy. They may dismiss, without assigning cause, a master in whom, for any reason, they have ceased to have confidence. But until they do so, his authority is absolute. While seeking, therefore, to cultivate the most friendly relations with the trustees, Arnold was very resolute in regard to the rights and privileges of his office. And when on the appearance of an article in the Edinburgh Review, which was generally and rightly attributed to him, an influential

1 Letter CXXIV.

RELATION OF HEAD MASTER TO GOVERNORS 73

governor of the school wrote to ask him if he were the author, he replied without hesitation. The letters following have in fact established a precedent of which many later teachers have availed themselves for their own protection against interference within the sphere of their own lawful freedom and responsibility. Earl Howe wrote to him requesting, as one of the trustees of Rugby School, that Dr. Arnold would declare if he was the author of the article on Dr. Hampden in the Edinburgh Review, and stating that his conduct would be guided by Dr. Arnold's answer.

"MY LORD,

"RUGBY, June 22, 1836.

"The answer which your Lordship has asked for I have given several times to many of my friends; and I am well known to be very little apt to disavow or conceal my authorship of anything that I may at any time have written. Still, as I conceive your Lordship's question to be one which none but a personal friend has the slightest right to put to me, or to any man, I feel it due to myself to decline giving any answer to it."

In reply to a second letter in which Lord Howe urged compliance with his request, on the grounds that he might feel constrained by official duty to take some step in the matter in case the report were true, Arnold says:

"Your Lordship addressed me in a tone purely formal and official, and at the same time asked a question which the common usage of society regards as one of delicacy — justified I do not say, only by personal friendship, but at least

by some familiarity of acquaintance. It was because no such ground could exist in the present case, and because I cannot and do not acknowledge your right officially as a trustee of Rugby School, to question me on the subject of my real or supposed writings on matters wholly unconnected with the school, that I felt it my duty to decline answering your Lordship's question.

"It is very painful to be placed in a situation where I must either appear to seek concealment wholly foreign to my wishes, or else must acknowledge a right which I owe it, not only to myself, but to the master of every endowed school in England, absolutely to deny. But in the present case, I think I can hardly be suspected of seeking concealment. I have spoken on the subject of the article in the Edinburgh Review, freely, in the hearing of many, with no request for secrecy, on their part, expressed or implied. Officially, however, I cannot return an answer, not from the slightest feeling of disrespect to your Lordship, but because my answering would allow a principle which I can, on no account, admit to be just or reasonable."

CHAPTER V

Arnold as a disciplinarian - Moral evils in school - Description of their danger - Mr. Welldon's picture of school life-Fagging — Luxury and idleness - Expulsion - Religious lessons - Chapel services-School sermons-Extravagance-Home influence Mental cultivation a religious duty- A memorable sermonReligious exercises - Corporate life of a great school - What is Christian education - Clerical schoolmasters - The influence of Arnold's sermons generally - Punishments-Study of individual character Games and athletics - Tom Brown's School Days — Rugby boys at the Universities - Bishop Percival's estimate

ARNOLD'S fame, however, rests more largely on his work as a ruler and administrator, than on his special gifts as a teacher. It was the discipline, the 00s, the moral atmosphere of Rugby, on which, as he himself desired, his influence was most strongly felt. He had from the first an oppressive sense of the formidable character of the task he had undertaken; of the vast capacity for evil which lay yet undeveloped in a crowd of young, high-spirited, lawless lads; and yet of the boundless possibilities of good which were there also. "The management of boys," he said, "has all the interest of a great game of chess with living creatures for pawns and pieces, and your adversary in plain English the devil, who truly plays a tough game and is very hard to beat." It is a familiar fact in the experience of teachers that the interval between childhood and manhood is a somewhat intractable period; a state of transition wherein the several elements of

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our composite nature exist for the time in unfavourable proportions. The shepherd's wish in the Winter's Tale, "I would there were no age between ten and three and twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest," has found an echo in the thoughts of many a schoolmaster. Boys, however, decline to go to sleep from ten years old till twenty-three. They are in fact very much alive, and Arnold was sometimes appalled at the task he had undertaken. When he went to Rugby, the state of morals and behaviour was eminently disheartening; drunkenness and swearing were common vices; a reckless defiance of authority, and a hatred of submission to it, were combined with a servile cringing to the public opinion of the school. There was great readiness to combine for evil, and a systematic persecution carried on by the bad against the good. Dr. Moberly, head master of Winchester, and afterwards Bishop of Salisbury, says that "the tone of young men who came up to the University from Winchester, Eton, Rugby, or Harrow, was universally irreligious. A religious undergraduate was very rare, and was much laughed at when he appeared."

An outspoken passage from one of Arnold's school sermons shows how true a diagnosis he had made of the evils he had to encounter, and how deep was his sense of the dangers and pitfalls which surround life in a great public school.

"What the aspect of public schools is when viewed with a Christian eye, and what are the feelings with which men who do really turn to God in after life look back upon their years passed at school, I cannot express better than in