I. THOMAS ARNOLD AS A TEACHER.

BY SAMUEL ELIOT,

Brownell Professor of History and Literature, Trinity College, Hartford, Ct.

"I he is elected to the head-mastership of Rugby," wrote one of Arnold's friends in the year 1827, "he will change the face of education all through the public schools of England." High-sounding prediction, and yet fulfilled to the letter. "A most singular and striking change," wrote another friend of Arnold, after his death in 1842, "has come upon our public schools ;"-the writer being the headmaster of Winchester school,-"I am sure that to Dr. Arnold's personal earnest simplicity of purpose, strength of character, power of influence, and piety, which none who ever came near him could mistake or question, the carrying of this improvement into our schools. is mainly attributable."

Such a reformer can not be too frequently or too widely studied. Often as he may have been portrayed, there still remain fresh lineaments, untried attitudes, in which he may be represented by a new limner. Nor will the effect of his reforms be found confined within the limits of his own land or nation. The English schools are not American, nor are the American schools English in points of constitution, operation, or varying detail; but the reformer of one order of schools will be found closely allied to the reformer of the other order; while it is even truer that the great teacher in England is as much a study to every teacher in America as if he had labored on this side of the Atlantic.

Our purpose shapes itself accordingly. We shall not attempt a biography of Arnold, but rather essay to describe him as the teacher. Nor shall we do this without steady reference to the influence of his example amongst ourselves,-to the lesson which his career as an instructor conveys to every one of us engaged or interested in the great cause of education.

THOMAS ARNOLD was born at West Cowes, Isle of Wight, in the year 1795. The loss of his father, before he was six years old, left him dependent upon his mother and his aunt, the latter taking charge of his early education. Placed at school, first in Warminster and then in Winchester, he laid the foundations, as a school-boy, of the No. 12.-VOL. IV., No. 3.]—35.