SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

HMOnsatre.

The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold. D.D., late Head Master of Rugby School, and Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Oxford. Sly Arthur Peorhyn Stanley, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of University College Oxford. In two volumes Fellowes. Tasm.s.

Western Batbm7: its Wild Tribes and Savage Animals. By John H. Drummond

Hay, Esq. (Colonial and Home Library, No.9 I Murray. remote. The H— Family: Trainman; Axel and Anna; and other Tales. By Fredrika Bre. user. Translated by Mary Howitt. In two volumes Longman and Co.

DR. ARNOLD'S LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE.

THE sudden death of Dr. ARNOLD was one of the greatest losses English literature has endured, not merely in what he might have

achieved, but in what he left uncompleted. Roman history, from

the end of the second Punic War to the time he proposed to close it by the coronation of CHARLEMAGNE, or even to the

death of Annusxus, furnishes one of the richest of subjects for his- torical narrative and for deductions of political wisdom. His Lec- tures as Professor of Modern History at Oxford were on a still more useful ground for exposition ; and he contemplated works on ecclesiastical history and Scriptural commentary which would probably have stood unrivalled for their combination of sound learning, freedom from prejudice, a massy and manly sagacity, with a profound Christian spirit. But " Dis aliter visum est." Ile was cut off in the prime of life, by hereditary spasm of the heart ; with physical strength and constitutional health unimpaired, un- touched; with the reasoning faculties sharpening and expanding, and his imaginative powers ripening, or rather developing, — for it is singular that not merely did his own imagination increase with his years, but his taste for works of imagination. He was more practical and narrowly utilitarian when a student in his teens at Oxford, than when, in the last year of his life he went thither to

deliver his inaugural lecture as Professor of? History, and was compelled, by the thick-thronging audience, to quit the usual

rooms and adjourn to the Theatre, notwithstanding his determined opposition to the Tractarians, his supposed heretical opinions on Prelacy, and his reputed Radicalism.

The fragments of what he has left behind are enough for his own fame, though too little for us. But Dr. ARNOLD was not merely a literary man. It was at Rugby, rather than at Eton, that the foundation of "Young England" was laid. In the testimo- nials placed before the Rugby Trustees, Dr. HAWKINS said, that if ARNOLD were elected he would reform the public schools of England; and Sir HENRI HALFORD subsequently told the successful candi-

date that this opinion had greatly influenced the election. His re- forms, however, were rather spiritual than formal. Externally he changed little, and upheld the systems to which the spirit of the age was adverse—flogging and fagging ; though he limited flagellation to the junior boys, and used fagging rather as a mode of upholding dis- cipline by means of self-government. One of his modes of improve- ment was a greater attention to the character of the boys : he would

tacitly advise a quiet removal if he thought a pupil likely to cor- rupt his fellows, or not capable of profiting by the school. He also aimed at exciting what BURKE considered the principal dis-

tinction between ancient and modern times—the spirit of religion and the spirit of a gentleman. In sermons, and in general addresses to the boys, he dwelt strongly upon the importance of religion and

the avoidance of sin ; and he encouraged all those of sufficient age regularly to receive the sacrament. Above all, he trusted them ;

visiting deception with severe punishment, but never presupposing an intention to deceive. When an upper boy wished to enforce a denial by other circumstances, he would stop him with—" That is

enough; of course I believe your word." This confidence, and

other points of a similar kind, ad well as a strict attention in the selection of the masters, and various educational improvements in the school, were yet but modes. The reform must have de-

rived its efficacy from Dr. ARNOLD'S personal character, especially that warm and genial nature which we noticed as so conspicuous in the last volume of his History of Rome ; for his personal com- munication with the boys was slight except with the upper form. But, whatever might be the means, there was a great improvement in the tone and character of the Rugby scholars, which thence spread through the other public schools and the Universities of England. Upon this topic Dr. MOBERLEY, the present Head Master of Winchester, who was educated at Winchester and Ox- ford, and is opposed to the political and ecclesiastical opinions of Dr. ARNOLD, definitively speaks. (Vol. I. p. 171, 172.)

But all this only refers to a moral and religious tone of mind, and to improvements in the style of education. The influence

of Dr. ARNOLD it may be believed, was indirectly felt in drawing

attention to the poor as men, and to our social evils in general ; which forms the essential trait of "Young England." So early as 1825, he speaks of their sad condition in comparison with the poor of other countries; as an evil long pressing upon his mind; and throughout his correspondence the social evils of the country, the dangers of the manufacturing system, the overrating of national wealth compared with national happiness, and the other topics 'which Young England is now urging, are frequently alluded to

They are noticed, however, in a different way ; with more of depth, more of largeness, more of toleration, and less of mere educational and antique prejudice than possesses the less robust minds of those very excellent persons ; some of whom would stare at hearing of Episcopacy as a mere institution, Tractarianism as Worse than Popery, the establishment of lay readers, and the doc-

trine that the people in general form the church, and so forth.

In tracing the Young England doctrines up to Dr. ARNOLD, we mean, that the creed can be deduced more clearly from his correspondence than elsewhere, and at a period antecedent to its public advocacy. Coupling this with his acknowledged influence upon the rising minds at the Universities, we look upon him as one of its principal founders. But it would have grown without him, for the tendency of the age was in that direction ; and it is only works of genius that depend upon any single man. Reforma- tion of some sort would have taken place though LUTHER had never lived ; America would have been discovered without COLUDI BUS : but we must have had SHAKSPERE for Shalspere's Plays.

Like many scholars, especially when scholarship is combined with a regular profession, an early marriage, and a happy home, Dr. Au- NOLD passed an uneventful life, lie was born on the 13th June 1795, and died on the 12th June 1842 • his father was a Collector of the Customs at the Isle of Wight, an his family appears to have been respectable. The intermediate period between his birth and death consists of four great phases or epochs. 1. His childhood and school-days, (1795-1811); of which there is little more to say than that after passing some time at a preparatory school he went to Winchester, where he was elected to a scholarship at Corpus Christi College. 2. His Oxford life, (1811-1818) ; during parts of which he was beset by doubts, first in relation to the Articles and afterwards as regards the Trinity ; his difficulties being in- creased by conscientious scruples lest, having contemplated the church as a profession, he might be unconsciously biassed by tem- poral motives. However, he was ordained Deacon in December 1818 ; though, if we rightly interpret a letter by an intimate friend (Vol I. page 22) in reference to this subject, he was harassed after ordination, not so much by sceptical inquiry as by thoughts that rose in despite of himself. 3. In 1819, he opened at Lalehatn a sort of private establishment to prepare youth for the University : in 1820 he married, and pursued the routine life of a private teacher till 1828 ; when he removed to Rugby, to the Head Mastership of which foundation he had been elected in the close of the preceding year. During this third epoch of his life, he occupied his leisure by writing the articles on Roman History for the Encyclopmdia Metropolitana and contributing to some reviews: he often varied the vacations by a Continental tour ; and in 1825 he began to learn German, with a view to the perusal of NIEBUHR. 4. The last epoch of his life (1828-1842) was the most busy, the most practically useful, and presented him to the public in the most conspicuous light. Besides his exertions in educational reform he published several volumes of Sermons, an edition of Thucydides, and his History of Rome, together with a variety of Tracts for the Times, on political, social, and ecclesiastical reform ; for throughout life he kept his attention fixed upon passing events and was eagerly alive to current topics. During the Reform fever in 1831, he started a newspaper called the Englishman's Register ; and when ill success induced its discontinuance, he addressed the public through some provincial journals and by means of pamphlets. Of a newspaper as a means of operating upon opinion he appears to have entertained a high notion ; nor did his hankering after one, as a channel of influence, cease till the apathy that followed "Finality." In a career of this peaceful industry and private and public ex- cellence there was little for the biographer to relate; nor is Mr. STANLEY'S work so much a narrative as a commentary. Dividing his book into epochs' he expounds at length the character of Dr. ARNOLD'S views, and the growth of his opinions during each period; mentioning the incidents that occurred within it, and describing his personal traits. To each of these divisions the biographer affixes the correspondence that chronologically belongs to it; which is often illustrative of the expositions of his text, but very often too passing and discursive to admit of narrative reduction. An appen- dix is added of various things, the most important of which are ex- tracts from the journals Dr. ARNOLD kept of his Continental tours : and these are very interesting—graphic in description, sagacious in remark, and biographical in the expression of his domestic feelings. The plan of this publication is excellent. Of its execution opi- nions will vary. Those who knew or can fully appreciate the ex- cellence of Dr. ARNOLD, will think the extracts from the Corre- spondence not too ample; but the public at large may probably think that some passages relating to questions of criticism, or mi- nute opinions, or personal matters scarcely of a biographical cha- racter, might have been retrenched. But taken as a whole, the Correspondence is very interesting ; various in topic, lifelike in its grasp of passing events' sensible in view, manly in style, and biographical in character. Upon the original matter there will be less difference of judgment. It possesses a species of scholastic character ; but greater condensation would have given it more vigour in point of composition, and conveyed a more distinct and striking picture of the subject of the biography. Our extracts will be of a miscellaneous kind, and more exhibiting Dr. ARNOLD'S opinions than relating to his life.

PERSONAL TRAITS.

He was then, as always, of a shy and retiring disposition; but his manner an a child, and till his entrance at Oxford, was marked by a stiffness and formality the very reverse of the joyousness and simplicity of his later years : his family and schoolfellows both remember him as unlike those of his own age, and with peculiar pursuits of his own. • •

Both as a boy and a young man, he was remarkable for a tendency to indo- lence, amounting almost to a constitutional infirmity; and though his after-life will show how completely this was overcome by habit, yet he (Alen said that early rising was a daily effort to him, and that in this instance he never found the truth of the usual rule of all things being made easy by custom. ' * •

Be was from his earliest years exceedingly fond of ballad poetry, which his Winchester schoolfellows used to learn from his repetition before they had

seen it in print ; and his own compositions as a boy all ran in the same di- rection. • • But he was most remarked for his forwardness in history and geography. Ills strong power of memory, (which, however, in later years depended mainly

on association,) extending to the exact state of the weather on particular days, or the exact words and position of passages which be had not seen for twenty years, showed itself very early, and chiefly on these subjects. One of the few recollections which he retained of his father Wag' that he received from him, at three years old, a present of Smollett's History of England, as a reward for the accuracy with which he bad gone through the stories connected with the por- traits and pictures of the successive reigns; and at the same age he used to sit at his aunt's table arranging his geographical cards, and recognizing by their shape at a glance the different counties of the dissected map of England. GERM OF "10050 ENGLAND." FROM FLORENCE, 1825.

I have long bad a suspicion that Cobbett's complaints of the degradation and sufferings of the poor in England contained much truth, though uttered by him in the worst possible spirit. It is certain that the peasantry here are much more generally proprietors of their own land than with us; and I should be- lieve them to be much more independent and in easier circumstances. This is, I believe, the grand reason why so many of the attempts at revolution have failed in these countries. A revolution would benefit the lawyers, the savant, the merchants, bankers, and shopkeepers; but I do not see what the labouring classes would gain by it. For them the work has been done already, in the destruction of the feudal tyranny of the nobility and great men : and in my opinion this blessing is enough to compensate the evils of the French Revolu- tion ; for the good endures, while the effects of the massacres and devastations are fast passing away. It is my delight everywhere to see the feudal castles in ruins, never. I trust, to be rebuilt or reoccupied ; and in this respect the watchword "Guerre aux chateaux, Pair aux chaumieres," was prophetic of the actual result of the French Revolution. I am sure that we have too much of the oligarchical spirit in England, both in Church and State ; and I think that those one-eyed men the political economists encourage this by their lan- guage about national wealth, &c.

PROFLIGACY OF ENGLISH GENTLEMEN.

I met five Englishmen at the public table at our inn at Milan, who gave me great matter for cogitation. One was a clergyman, and just returned from Egypt; the rest were young men, i. e. between twenty-five and thirty, and ap- parently of no profession. I may safely say, that since I was an under-graduate I never heard any conversation so profligate as that which they all indulged in, the clergyman particularly ; indeed, it was not merely gross, but avowed prin- ciples of wickedness such as I do not remember ever to have heard in Oxford. But what struck me most was, that with this sensuality there was united some intellectual activity—they were not ignorant, but seemed bent on gaining a great variety of solid information from their travels. Now this union of vice and intellectual power and knowledge seems to me rather a sign of the age; and if it goes on, it threatens to produce one of the most fearful forms of Antichrist which has yet appeared. I am sure that the great prevalence of travelling fosters this spirit : not that men learn mischief from the French or Italians, but because they are removed from the check of public opinion, and are, in fact, self-constituted outlaws, neither belonging to the society which they have left nor taking a place in that of the countries where they are tra- velling.

PLEASURES OF CONSTRUING.

I stand in amaze at the utter want of poetical feeling in the minds of the majority of boys. They cannot in the least understand either Homer or Virgil; they cannot follow out the strong graphic touches which, to an active mind, suggest such infinitely varied pictures, and yet leave it to the reader to draw them for himself on the hint given. But my delight in going over Homer and Virgil with the boys makes me think what a treat it must be to teach Shake- speare to a good class of young Greeks in regenerate Athens ; to dwell upon him line by line, and word by word, in the way that nothing but a translation- lesson ever will enable one to do ; and so to get all his pictures and thoughts leisurely into one's mind, till I verily think one would after a time almost give out light in the dark, after having been steeped as it were in such an atmo- sphere of brilliance. And how could this ever be done without having the pro- cess of construing, as the grosser medium through which alone all the beauty can be transmitted, because else we travel too fast, and more than half of it escapes us?

READ ONLY GREAT AUTHORS.

I would say, as a good general rule, never read the works of any ordinary man, except on scientific matters, or when they contain simple matters of fact. .Even on matters of fact, silly aud ignorant men, however honest and indus- trious in their particular subject, require to be read with constant watchfulness and suspicion ; whereas great men are always instructive, even amidst much of error on particular points. In general, however, I bold it to be certain, that the truth is to be found in the great men, and the error in the little ones.