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Like forest leaves in the autumn of thine ire:

Faithful and True! thou still wilt save thine own!
The saints shall dwell within the unharming fire,
Each white robe spotless, blooming every palm.
Even safe as we, by this still fountain's side,
So shall the Church, thy bright and mystic Bride,
Sit on the stormy gulf a halcyon bird of calm,
Yes, 'mid yon angry and destroying signs,
O'er us the rainbow of thy mercy shines,
We hail, we bless the covenant of its beam,
Almighty to avenge, Almightiest to redeem !

THE LATE DR. ARNOLD.

From the Edinburgh Review.

Introductory Lectures on Modern History. By THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D., Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Oxford, and Head Master of Rugby School. 8vo. Oxford: 1842.

IMPERFECTLY as this volume of Lectures, interrupted by the death of its lamented author, answers the promise, to the fulfilment of which we looked so eagerly, little more than a year ago, when he was appointed to the Chair of Modern History at Oxford, we should feel ourselves guilty of no common degree of neglect if we omitted to notice it ; for we may perhaps find no other occasion for paying our tribute of respect to one of the noblest minds and highest characters of these days, prematurely taken from us in the middle of a career of usefulness, which we believe we are guilty of no exaggeration in terming unparalleled in that line of life which Dr. Arnold had adopted.

As far as they throw light on the literary and intellectual attainments of their author, these lectures are undoubtedly incomplete enough; and, regarded in that point of view, they possess the positive fault of attempting too many things at once. They are impressed with the peculiarly eager temperament, the perfervidum ingenium, the active, but somewhat desultory range of thought which display themselves, more or less, in every production of the writer. Who that has read much, and felt strongly, on any subject, and who has not yet acquired that last and somewhat melancholy gift of experience, the art of arranging and chastening the thoughts as they arise, when favored with some opportunity of giving vent to his accumulated ideas, has not experienced the mixture of pleasurable excitement and embarrassment produced by the throng of multitudinous topics pressing forward for utter

ance? This argument to be confuted, that to be urged, this long-cherished theory to be advanced, that well-remembered illustration to be furbished up for use-and all to be compressed within the narrow compass prescribed by overruling circumstances! Just so we can conceive of Dr. Arnoldfrom his youth an insatiable reader of history, and at the same time an active controversialist, in whose head every series of phenomena naturally crystallized into a theory-when he suddenly found himself invested with the office of an historical teacher. We perceive at once, in the odd mixture of matters huddled together in these few pages, the variety of subjects which filled his mind, and the necessity under which he lay of disburdening himself of his feelings on each, as if the retention of any part of his stores oppressed him. The province of history-the provinces of church and state-the characteristics of historical style-military ethics-military geography -national prejudices-religious and political parties in England-these are only some of the prominent topics rather glanced at than discussed in the pages before us; and put forward apparently as if for more extended consideration at some future timetopics on which he longed to speak his mind to the world, and could not abstain from a partial disclosure of it-topics, many of them, on which we shall have long to wait for an instructor as rich at once in zeal and knowledge.

But if this volume is to a certain extent disappointing, rather from the over-richness than meagerness of its contents, it will, if possible, add to the veneration with which its author's character is already regarded as a moral philosopher, and an instructor of the youth of England. It adds one more claim to those which the late head master of Rugby already possessed on public gratitude and veneration.

Every one accustomed to English society has observed the strength of that generous tie which, in after life, connects the pupil, especially when bred in our great public schools, with his former master. Even in ordinary cases, we by no means admit the truth of the ill-natured saying, that there is little of this affectionate remembrance, except where the scholar feels himself superior to his teacher. We believe it, on the contrary, to be the general rule, and that the exceptions arise only from causes discreditable either to the one party or the other. But, common as this feeling is, and derived as it is from many sources-from the instinctive attachment to old places and times

-from sensibility to kindness shown and nected with the subject of these lectures, to interest manifested-from real gratitude for trace the steps by which he was wont to substantial services-we are bound to add lead the mind from feeling to thinking; that, as far as our own observation has gone, from the formation of a religious character, it rarely, very rarely, has the higher tinc- his first and main object, to the formation of ture of reverence. The quondam school- opinion on religious as well as other subboy may have a host of pleasant recollec- jects. The first rule with him was, to foltions associated with the memory of his old low the truth at all hazards-regardless in tutor: he may regard him as the friend who what apparent difficulties it may involve us directed his unformed taste-who intro-regardless into what bad company it may duced his youthful spirit into the magnifi- lead us. The absolute right and duty of the cent domain of earthly knowledge-to mind to judge for itself, the total negation of whose counsels he may possibly be indebt. any human authority binding in matters of ed for a few valuable hints in the conduct faith-these are points on which he insisted, of life-more than this, who has imbued in season and out of season, if we may so him with much of the spirit of a gentleman, express ourselves, with an ardor which not and a love of fairness and honorable deal- only rendered him very unpopular, as well ing; but in very few instances, indeed, does it might, with persons of different opinions, he remember him as his guide towards the but frequently exposed him to charges of accomplishment of the real ends of his being. imprudence and rashness from those who in We do not pause to examine into the cause the main agreed with him. This ardor proof this deficiency: much may be owing to ceeded, no doubt, in part from naturalˇimold peculiarities in the management of great petuosity of disposition; but it also arose schools, something to the character of from a deep conviction, that the one great many of our most successful men in this thing wanted, and in these times especially, line of life; but we think the fact will hard- is, to infuse into the mind the power and ly be disputed. By far the most distinguish- the will to rest self-balanced;-to incite it ed exception to the rule, with whom we are to implant in itself the seeds of principles, acquainted, was Dr. Arnold. He possessed which neither the recklessness of business the art, which is perhaps not very uncom- nor pleasure, nor the thousand influences mon, of winning in a peculiar manner the of party, might afterwards eradicate. The affections of boys, and directing their ener- lines of Goethegies to whatever object he might himself hold out; but, what is much more rare, he made it the one great business of his life to give those affections and energies a religious direction. Distinguished as a schoolmaster in many respects, it was in this one that he was unrivalled. The mainspring of might almost be inscribed as the motto to his success was his own deep affection for the whole collection of his ethical and histhose placed under his care, which makes torical works. And his great endeavoritself evident in every page of his sermons, no one could set the example better than chiefly addressed to the young. His was no himself-was so to discipline the mind, as entraining or engrossing religious elo-to reconcile freedom of belief with real huquence, addressed as it were to minds in the mass, and carrying them away by movements of enthusiasm; but a gentle, watchful influence, directed steadily to individual temperaments; and above all, (which was partly the consequence of the thorough reality of his own religious impressions,) not leaving religion to stand alone, as something to be learnt and studied apart from all things else, but connecting it with all that is most naturally attractive to the honest heart of youth;-with uncompromising love of truth, with manliness and indepence, with love and with gratitude. Ve dare not venture further on consideris of such deep and sacred importance. more to our purpose, and more con

"Denn der Mensch, der zu schwankenden Zeiten

auch Schwankend gesinnt ist,
Der vermehret das Uebel, und breitet es weiter und
weiter;

Aber wer fest auf dem Sinne beharrt, der bildet die
Welt sich,❞—

mility of spirit; to reconcile the unqualified rejection of authority, when imposed as binding, with docility and submissiveness towards it when propounded as an object of respect;-a reconcilement by no means difficult in itself, and possibly more common in practice than is generally imagined. Clear of his own way between the conflicting claims of authority and individual responsibility, he regarded with utter contempt the charges of presumption, so indiscriminately brought against all those who venture to differ from received opinions. Will-worship, as he well knew, is quite as fatally manifested in wilful and passionate adherence to such opinions, as in wilful and passionate rejection of them. The rule of

Those who have thus learnt the real characteristics of veneration and humility, will understand the lesson which the history of the world so abundantly teaches that selfwill and pride play their vagaries quite as wantonly under the banner of authority as under that of private judgment; a lesson renewed to us by the experience of every day, to the great astonishment of that part of the world which is taken in by fine pro

fessions.

humility does not mark out the line to be taken by the man of conscience, when authority and argument are in opposition; but the manner and spirit in which his choice must be made. Nor is it difficult to apply, as he would have bidden us, to the controversies of the present day, the lesson intended to be conveyed in the following noble vindication of the Puritan character:"To say that the Puritans were wanting in humility, because they did not acquiesce in the state of things which they found around them, is a mere It will be readily perceived, from this as extravagance, arising out of a total misapprehen- well as a hundred other passages in his sion of the nature of humility, and of the merits of works, that Dr. Arnold made it a great part the feeling of veneration. All earnestness and of his business to carry on war against predepth of character is incompatib'e with such a notion of humility. A man deeply penetrated with judices; and certainly a more determined, some great truth, and compelled, as it were, to obey we might almost say a more indiscriminait, cannot listen to every one who may be indiffer- ting warfare, was never waged. Those ent to it, or opposed to it. There is a voice to which among our prejudices to which we are apt he already owes obedience-which he serves with to give the tenderest names, and treat as the humblest devotion, which he worships with the peculiarly creditable to ourselves, met from most intense veneration. It is not that such feel him with no more quarter than the rest. ings are dead in him, but that he has bestowed them on one object and they are claimed for another. Perhaps it may be thought, even by those To which they are most due is a question of juswho most admire the singleness of his detice: he may be wrong in his decision, and his votion to truth, that in some instances his worship may be idolatrous; but so also may be the zeal was so unscrupulous that he ran the worship which his opponents call upon him to ren- risk of rooting out good feelings along with der. If, indeed, it can be shown, that a man ad- mere weaknesses; but such was the characmires and reverences nothing, he may justly be ter of the man. Take for instance, the foltaxed with want of humility; but this is at variance lowing attack on the virtue of patriotism, with the very notion of an earnest character, for its earnestness consists in its devotion to some one as vulgarly understood:object, as opposed to a proud or contemptuous in"But here that feeling of pride and selfishness difference. But tf it be meant that reverence in interposes, which, under the name of patriotism, itself is good, so that the more objects of vencration has so long tried to pass itself off for a virtue. As we have the better is our character, this is to conmen, in proportion to their moral advancement, found the essential difference between veneration learn to enlarge the circle of their regards; as an and love. The excellence of love is its universali-exclusive affection for our relations, our clan, or ty; we are told that even the Highest Object of all cannot be loved if inferior objects are hated. And with some exaggeration in the expression, we may admit the truth of Coleridge's lines

"He prayeth well who loveth well

our country, is a sure mark of an unimproved mind; so is that narrow and unchristian feeling to be condemned, which regards with jealousy the progress of foreign nations, and cares for no portion of the human race but that to which itself belongs. The detestable encouragement so long given to national enmities-the low gratification feit by every people in extolling themselves above their neighbors should not be forgotten amongst the causes which have mainly obstructed the improvenent of mankind.

Both man, and bird, and beast;" Insomuch that, if we were to hear of a man sacrificing even his life to save that of an animal, we could not help admiring him. But the excel lence of veneration consists purely in its being fixed upon a worthy object; when felt indiscriminately, it is idolatry or insanity. To tax any one, "Exclusive patriotism should be cast off, totherefore, with want of reverence, because he pays gether with the exclusive ascendency of birth, as no respect to what we venerate, is either irrelevant belonging to the follies and selfishness of our unor is a mere confusion. The fact, so far as it is cultivated nature. Yet, strange to say, the fortrue, is no reproach, but an honor; because to re-mer at least is upheld by men who not only call verence all persons and all things is absolutely themselves Christians, but are apt to use the charge wrong reverence shown to that which does not deserve it, is no virtue-no, nor even an amiable weakness, but a plain folly and sin. But if it be meant that he is wanting in proper reverence, not respecting what is to be really respected, that is assuming the whole question at issue, because what we call divine he calls an idol; and as, supposing that we are in the right, we are bound to fall down and worship; so supposing him to be in the right, he is no less bound to pull it to the ground and destroy it.-P. 268.

of irreligion as the readiest weapon against those who differ from them. So little have they learned of the spirit of that revelation, which taught emphatically the abolition of an exclusively national religion and a local worship, that so men, being all born of the same blood, might make their sympathies coextensive with their bond of universal brotherhood."—Appendix to Thucydides, Vol. I.

This scrupulousness of conscience is carried by him into the minutest details:

and we have been rather amused to ob-couragement of crime, and encouraging that worse serve how he labors to disabuse his class, evil, a sympathy with wickedness justly punished, in these lectures, of the delusive notion that rather than with the law, whether of God or man, one Englishman can beat three Frenchmen; against the power of the Crown after the Crown unjustly violated. So men have continued to cry out assuring us that we were quite as satisfac-had been shackled hand and foot; and to express torily beaten by them, under William the Third and the Duke of Cumberland, as they by us under Marlborough and Wellington. It is in a similar spirit that he warns readers of history against the ordinary seduction of favorite party names and watchwords, outliving the immediate occasion which gave birth to them.

"This inattention to altered circumstances, which would make us be Guelfs in the sixteenth

and seventeenth centuries, because the Guelf cause had been right in the eleventh or twelfth, is a fault of most universal application in all political questions, and is often most seriously mischievous. It is deeply seated in human nature, being in fact no other than an exemplification of the force of habit. It is like the case of a settler landing in a country overrun with wood and undrained, and visited, therefore, by excessive falls of rain. The evil of wet, and damp, and closeness, is besetting him on every side; he clears away the woods and drains his land, and by doing so mends both his climate and his own condition. Encouraged by his success, he perseveres in his system;-clearing a country is with him synonymous with making it fertile and habitable; and he levels, or rather sets fire to, his forests without mercy. Meanwhile the tide has turned without his observing it; he has already cleared enough, and every additional clearance is a mischief; damp and wet are no longer the evils most to be dreaded, but excessive drought. The rains do not fall in sufficient quantity, the springs

become low, the rivers become less and less fitted

for navigation.* Yet habit blinds him for a long

while to the real state of the case, and he continues to encourage a coming mischief in his dread of one that has become obsolete. We have long been making progress on our present tack; yet if we do not go about now, we shall run ashore. Consider the popular feeling at this moment against capital punishments; what is it but continuing to burn the woods when the country actually wants shade and moisture? Year after year men talked of the severity of the penal code, and struggled against it in vain. The feeling became stronger and stronger, and at last effected all, and more than all, while it had at first vainly demanded; yet still from mere habit it pursues its course, no longer to the restraining of legal cruelty, but to the injury of innocence and the en

the greatest dread of popular violence, long after that violence was exhausted, and the anti-popular party was not only rallied, but had turned the tide of battle, and was victoriously pressing upon its enemy.”—P. 252.

It is very unnecessary to add, after such comments as these, that Dr. Arnold belonged to no party in Church or State. Under no circumstances could he have belonged to any; his independence of spirit, his almost over-refined delicacy of conscience, perhaps a certain restiveness of disposition when forced to travel in company, would alike have forbidden it. But as it was, he detested the spirit of party with a perfect abhorrence; he detested it as the great rival in the minds of men with the love of his idol, Truth. He never fails, on any occasion, to impress this aversion, in the strongest language, on all whom he addresses. It is a matter on which he admits of no compromise whatever; none of that specious rhetoric by which we persuade ourselves that party is an indifferent means of arriving at a good end-that only through becoming party men can we hope to be useful, and so forth. His plain language is, that all such pleas, and all such hopes, must be abandoned by the honest had himself counted the cost, and made the more by the Christian. sacrifice. He had fully reconciled himself to the apparent uselessness of a life unconnected with party in a country like this. At one period of his career, he was the subject of great unpopularity: his views were misrepresented, his character maligned, his professional success menaced; he only recovered himself, after a long probation, by the great amiableness of his character, and through the fame acquired by his peculiar talent for instruction; for he was of no brothers to back him. Eminent in piety as party, and consequently had no band of in learning, he never attained a step in the Church; for he was of no party, and had, therefore, no claim on any patron. Yet there is nothing in his writings of the stoicism expressed in the stern

man-much

He

Perhaps we may remark on this geographical illustration as suggesting some other of its author's peculiarities; his remarkable power of turning such illustrations to his purpose; and the readiness of his imagination to welcome the curious and marvellous in matters of fact. Many naturalists have thought this theory of the effect of the removal of forests on the amount of rain, carried much too far; and it would be difficult to point out an instance of Dante; nothing of that querulousness wé of a river which has become unnavigable in conse-have often remarked in excellent men who quence of it We might also refer to his strange have had the honesty to renounce party and views respecting animal magnetism and cognate its advantages for themselves, but are un

matters.

"Taci, e lascia dir le genti,"

reasonable enough to be disappointed that parties do not seek after and follow them. Vehement in self-defence-ardent in attack -fond by nature of controversial skirmishing- he is always in the field against some class of thinkers or other; and always seems very unaffectedly surprised that the opposite ranks which he alternately attacks remain alike unbroken by his artillery; and therefore it is no wonder, that while some were abusing him as a latitudinarian, others maintained that he was halfway on the road to modern "Catholicism." But the principles of his practial philosophy lay deep, and his equanimity was, therefore, not to be moved by the inevitable results of his own choice; a choice to which he elsewhere solemnly exhorts his young audience, in a passage which seems to breathe the very essence at once of his religious sincerity, and his manly integrity of soul.

with one party, and in some with another; and equally certain to be called crotchety by both. But we must say in justice, that the epithet does to a certain extent describe his character, in some of its minute peculiarities. There was a rapidity of judgment about him-a haste in arriving at conclusions, which is apt to lead to the sudden formation of opinions-possibly to a little fickleness, on minor points, in adherence to them.. His judgment seems to have been influenced at once by an abhorrence of dogmatism, commonly so called, and an impatience of skepticism. We do not mean in a religious sense only, but in historical and every other research. He could not, like Montaigne, se reposer tranquillement sur l'oreiller du doute. He had a mind averse from suspense, dissatisfied and uneasy under the pressure of doubt; and, therefore, disposed to generalize at once, where slower and more cold-blooded men would con"Be of one party to the death, and that is sider the process of induction hardly begun. Christ's; but abhor every other; abhor it, that is, To this was joined a strong moral percep as a thing to which to join yourselves;-for every party is mixed up of good and evil, of truth and tion, and a disposition particularly inclined falsehood; and in joining it, therefore, you join towards ethical speculation-towards prewith the one as well as the other. If circum- dicating moral right and wrong of every stances should occur which oblige you practically phenomenon which human history and huto act with any one party, as the least of two evils, man nature exhibit: a peculiarity which he then watch yourselves the more, lest the least of seems to us to have caught in great mea two evils should, by any means, commend itself at last to your mind as a positive good. Join it with sure from association with his early friend a sad and reluctant heart, protesting against its Archbishop Whately, just as he caught his evil, dreading its victory, far more pleased to serve style of historical research from Niebuhr : it by suffering than by acting; for it is in Christ's-and a deep interest in the controversies cause only that we can act with heart and soul, as well as patiently and triumphantly suffer. Do this amidst reproach, and suspicion, and cold friendship, and zealous enmity; for this is the por: tion of those who seek to follow their Master, and him only. Do it, although your fos be they of your own household: those whom nature, or habit, or choice, had once bound to you most closely. And then you will understand how, even now, there is a daily cross to be taken up by those who seek not to please men, but God; yet you will learn no less, how that cross, meckly and firmly borne, whether it be the cross of men's ill opinion from without, or of our own evil nature struggled against within, is now, as ever, peace, and wisdom, and sanctification, and redemption, through Him who first bore it."-Sermons, Vol. III. 263.

of the day, with an eagerness to liberate his own mind by expressing his sentiments upon each of them. It is no disparagement of Dr. Arnold to say, that this very eagerness sometimes appears to us to betray a secret uneasiness-a misgiving as to the results of his own conscientious inquiries. There are few, indeed, who, having deliberately rejected the idolatries of parties and systems, can rest undisturbedly on the ground they have chosen for themselves; for such thinkers have nothing of the ready support on which others so confidently lean. They would be more than men, if there were not moments when the very foundations seem to give way under them, and their own But Dr. Arnold was a "crotchety" man: hearts to sink also-moments when they are such appears to have been the general esti- tempted even to look with envy on those mate of his character. It is an epithet of who march forward sternly or cheerfully, many meanings; but it seems to us to be looking neither to the right nor the left, commonly and significantly applied to those through regions in which they stumble and who endeavor to ascertain the truth on every grope for light; yet their victory is not the separate subject of inquiry, instead of follow- less complete, although the enjoyment of ing the ordinary process of taking up whole its fruits, like all human enjoyment, is inbundles of opinions as they are commonly terrupted by obstinate questionings of its found connected together. Whoever does own reality. this, is very certain to agree in some points

It is a curious result of these tendencies,

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