MR. TOM HUGHES AT RUGBY.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR...I
SIR, —I have read the passage quoted from "The Two Arnolds " in your review of Sir J. Fitch's book, and I shoali like to add that the author scarcely does justice to Hughes in saying that "it is to be feared that his boyhood was not spent with the best set in Rugby." Sir Joshua's chronology is at fault. I write without books of reference, but I can say with certainty that Lake (a town boy) took his degree in 1838, and must have left school at latest in 1835, while Tom Hughes was then but a little boy and my fag at the schoolhouse. I think he entered the school in that year or the year before, and it is highly improbable that he could ever have exchanged a word with Lake. The same may be said as to Arthur Stanley, who was at a dame's house, and at that time high up in the school. For that reason I very much doubt his being the original of "Arthur" in "Tom Brown." The same as to Vaughan, who was, I think, exactly contemporary with Stanley. Bradley and Lnshington he may have known, though Lushington was much his senior in the school; with Henry and Theodore Walrond he was certainly intimate; and probably with Matt. and Tom Arnold, but of this I am not sure, as they had not entered the school when I left it in 1837. With what Sir Joshua says of Tom Brown's not representing the intellectual side of the school, nor indeed more than one phase of Dr. Arnold's character, I quite agree; as I do also with your comment that Hughes was in no way to
blame for this. It was beyond the purview of his book, which had for its object to show that the average boy, intellectual or otherwise, could he trained by precept and example in the paths of manliness, honesty, and moral
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