“ARNOLD AND HIS SCHOOL.”
In the year 1827, the head mastership became vacant of the Grammar School at Rugby, and the trustees, a body of twelve country gentlemen and noblemen, selected, to the dismay of all the orthodox, the Rev. Thomas Arnold, late fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, and then taking private pupils at Laleham, Middlesex. Transplanted from Oriel, the hotbed of strange and unsound opinions, out of which the conflicting views of Whateley, Hampden, Keble, and Newman, were struggling into day; himself a disciple of the suspected school of German criticism; known to entertain views at variance with the majority of his church brethren on all the semipolitical questions of the day; an advocate for the admission of Roman Catholics to Parliament, for the reform of the Liturgy and enlargement of the Church, so as to embrace dissenters; the distrust with which he was regarded by all who did not know him may be imagined.
It was a critical time, the year 1827; the mind of the country was then undergoing that process of change which shortly afterwards showed itself in the emancipation of the Roman Catholics, the passing of the Reform Bill, the foundation of the London University, and the publications of the Useful Knowledge Society. Old opinions were on all sides the objects of attack. At such a period, public schools, with their exclusively classical teaching and their “fagging” systems, were naturally regarded as institutions of the past not adapted to the present. It seemed probable that a remodelling, or, according to the phrase of the day, a “reform” of them, would be attempted by the new intellectual school of which Lord Brougham was regarded as the type. It was the views of this party which, it was anticipated, Dr. Arnold would hasten to introduce into Rugby.
We now know that he did not do this, although he did reform not only the school of Rugby, but gave a bias to the education of the sons of what is still the most influential class in this country, which has lasted to the present day, and that in a direction and in a manner which surprised his opponents, and at one time provoked even his friends.
It may not be uninteresting to such of our readers as love to trace the origin of those changes of opinion, which are at times seen to diffuse themselves over portions of society from an unseen source, to learn how this original man commenced his task of training the minds committed to him in those peculiar tendencies, both as to feeling and thinking, which enter appreciably into the tone of the upper classes of the present generation.
Dr. Arnold, from the day on which he first took charge of the school, adopted the course which he ever after adhered to, of treating the boys like gentlemen and reasonable beings. Thus, on receiving from an offender an answer to any question he would say, “If you say so, of course I believe you,” and on this he would act. The effect of this was immediate and remarkable; the better feeling of the school was at once touched; boys declared, “It is a shame to tell Arnold a lie, because he always believes you;” and thus, at one bold step, the axe was put to the root of the inveterate practice of lying to the master, one of the curses of schools. In pursuance of the same views, when reprimanding a boy, he generally took him apart and spoke to him in such a manner as to make him feel that his master was grieved and troubled at his wrong-doing; a quakerlike simplicity of mien and language, a sternness of manner not unmixed with tenderness, and a total absence of all “don-ish” airs, combined to produce this effect. Nor were his personal habits without their effect. The boys saw in him no outward appearance of a solemn pedagogue or dignified ecclesiastic whom it was a temptation to dupe, or into whose ample wig javelins of paper might with impunity be darted; but a spare active determined man, six feet high, in duck trousers, a narrow-brimmed hat, a black sailor’s handkerchief knotted round his neck, a heavy walking-stick in his hand,—a strong swimmer, a noted runner; the first of all the masters in the school-room on the winter mornings, teaching the lowest class when it was his turn with the same energy which he would have thrown into a lecture to a critical audience, listening with interest to an intelligent answer from the smallest boy, and speaking to them more like an elder brother than the head master. [{67}] They soon perceived that they had to deal with a man thoroughly in earnest, acute, active, and not easily deceived; that he was not only a scholar but a gentleman, who expected them to behave as the sons of gentlemen themselves. Their attention was awakened, and, although their fears were somewhat excited, their sympathies and interest were at the same time aroused. This was a good commencement; but Arnold was ready with other means no less effectual for engaging their thoughts. He opened out to them at once “fresh fields and pastures new,” in the domain of knowledge; he established periodical examinations, at which (if a tolerable proficiency in the regular studies was displayed) a boy might offer to be examined in books on any subject he might prefer, and prizes were awarded accordingly. The offer was eagerly seized; modern history, biography, travels, fiction, poetry, were sought after; the habit of general reading was created, and a new intellectual activity pervaded the school. The writer well remembers the effect produced on him when he heard that Arnold had lent one of the boys Humphrey Clinker, to illustrate a passage in his theme. He felt from that time forth that the keys of knowledge were confided to him, and, in proof of this, his own little library, and those in the “studies” of many of his neighbours, shortly doubled their numbers. French, German, and mathematics, were encouraged by forming distinct classes on these subjects, and by conferring for high standing in them some of the privileges as to exemption from fagging, which previously had only attached to a similar standing in classics. Modern history was also introduced as a recognised branch of school study. The advantage of this was, that many of the boys, who, from deficient early training or peculiar turn of mind, were unable to bring themselves to proficiency in the regular Latin and Greek course of the school, and consequently were idle and listless, found other and more congenial paths in which intelligence and application would still meet with their reward.
By these simple means, now generally adopted in classical schools, but up to that time supposed to be incompatible with high accomplishments in classical learning, the standard of intelligence and information was incalculably raised, and the school, as a place of education in its wider sense, became infinitely more efficient.
We should have stated that Dr. Arnold’s skill as a teacher was unrivalled; he imparted a living interest to all he touched, to be attributed mainly to his habit of illustrating ancient events by “modern instances.” Thus, Thucydides and Napier were compared almost page by page; thus the “High Church party” of the Jews was pointed to as a type of “the Tories.” By means of his favourite topic, physical geography, he sought to bring the actual theatre of events before his pupils. Thus he would describe (when living at Laleham), the Vatican and Janiculum hills of Rome, as being “like the hills on the right bank of the Thames behind Chertsey;” the Monte Marie as being “about the height and steepness of Cooper’s Hill,” and “having the Tiber at the foot of it like the Thames at Anchorwick.”
To philology even, the deadly science of dead languages, and the great business of public schools, he contrived to impart life by continually pointing out its bearing on the history of the races of mankind. The interest thus given to study was something before unknown in schools.
So far we have confined ourselves to the effect of Arnold’s system on the mind, but the source of his most anxious thoughts and constant solicitude lay deeper than this; it related to the spiritual condition, or, according to the German phrase, “the inner life,” of the boys. With his usual indifference to personal labour he assumed the preachership of the chapel, declining however, also, with characteristic disinterestedness, the salary attached, hitherto given to increase the stipend of a junior master, and his famous “quarter of an hour” sermons, into which he threw all the power of his character and his intellect, no doubt gave him an opportunity of confirming, on certain minds, that influence which was primarily due to his earnest acts of heart and head.
We here approach a portion of his career on which difference of opinion must always exist. Impressed with an abiding conviction that all earthly things were subordinate to the relation between man and his Maker; keenly appreciating all that was “of good report,” and impatient of evil, or what seemed to him to be of evil tendency, even to intolerance, it must be admitted that in Arnold there was something of the zealot. With his acute sense of responsibility as to the spiritual state of the boys, it was natural that he should seek to impress those with whom he was brought in contact, and he did so. The personal notice he bestowed on boys of serious tendencies, asking them to his house and conversing with them on solemn subjects had this effect, and soon engendered “a sect” in the school. Now, the boys who were thus susceptible and formed this sect, were generally of the milder order of character, and not of that precocious virility which always gives influence in a great school; hence arose among the natural leaders of the school, the strong in character and the stout in heart and hand, a reaction against Arnold and against Arnold’s views, as being opposed to the traditional notions of the school. This reaction was strengthened by the peculiar nature of some of these views, such, for instance as those on the subject of the code of honour. Arnold, although himself a man actuated by a nice sense of honour, felt it his duty to set himself strongly in words against the code of honour; it was the constant object of vituperation on his part, even from the pulpit. His notions on this point, however, never gained ground with his hearers, who could not be brought to believe that their master (himself as true a knight errant as ever drew sword or pen,) was serious when he told them that the spirit of chivalry was “the true Antichrist.”
The attempt to introduce a more highly-wrought tone of religious feeling than was perhaps of wholesome growth in very young minds was, therefore, not without its drawbacks; the antagonism to some of his own views which it called forth, combined with the utter disregard to established views which characterized his own teaching, and which the school caught from him, told upon the boys’ minds. The direct and indirect effect of Arnold’s school of thought may indeed, now, we think, be traced in the general distrust of hitherto received opinions, which, but little tinged in England it is true with either licentiousness or irreverence, is nevertheless characteristic of the present generation.
These effects are also more manifest now that Arnold’s personal influence can no longer be exercised. So long as he was at his post, his earnest simplicity of character, his purity of life, his intellectual vigour, his fearless seeking after truth, carried away the sympathies of all who were brought in contact with him; not one of whom but will say, on looking back to the impression he left on them, “Behold an Israelite indeed in whom there was no guile!”
Thus the reform introduced into Rugby by Arnold, and indirectly into other public schools through him, was then very different from that which was anticipated from him. He did, it will be seen, none of the things he was expected by his party to do. He strenuously inculcated the views of Christian doctrine most opposed to those of the Latitudinarian party. [{71}] He stoutly adhered to the system of “fagging,” as being the best mode of responsible government for the school “out of school,” founding his opinion on his own experience at Winchester, on which he often dwelt. He raised and improved the standard of classical learning in its wider sense, so that the scholars of Rugby gained a high standing at the universities; and by showing that this was attainable consistently with acquirements in other branches of learning, and with the utmost amount of intelligent interest in the knowledge of the day, he confirmed that opinion in favour of the advantage of classical learning, as a sound philosophical means of training the faculties for worldly affairs, which we have seen lately advocated and applauded even in the heart of Manchester itself, at the opening of Owen’s College.
The change he introduced was thus more thorough, more deep and comprehensive, than any which the suggestions of his partisan supporters would have accomplished. It was a change in the very spirit of education, reaching beyond the years of boyhood or the limits of school walls.