II.—­Headmaster of Rugby

Arnold was not without his visions of ambition and extensive influence from the first, but he liked Laleham, and always looked back with fond regret to his time there.  “I have always thought,” he wrote in 1823, “with regard to ambition, that I should like to be aut Caesar aut nullus; and as it is pretty well settled for me that I shall not be Caesar, I am quite content to live in peace as nullus.”  But the fates had ordered it otherwise.  Friends had long been urging him to seek a larger sphere of usefulness; and when, in August, 1827, the headmastership of Rugby became vacant, he applied for the post.

He had himself little hope of success.  The testimonials he sent in were few, but all spoke strongly of his qualifications.  Among them was a letter from Dr. Hawkins, the future Provost of Oriel, in which the prediction was made that if Arnold were elected he would change the face of education throughout the public schools of England.  The impression produced upon the trustees by this letter and by the other testimonials was such that Arnold was immediately appointed.  In June, 1828, he received priest’s orders; in April and November of the same year took his degrees of B.D. and D.D., and in August entered on his new office.

The post was in many respects suited to his natural tastes—­to his love of tuition, which had now grown so strongly upon him that he declared sometimes that he could hardly live without such employment; to the vigour and spirits which fitted him rather to deal with the young than the old; to the desire of carrying out his favourite ideas of uniting things secular with things spiritual, and of introducing the highest principles of action into regions comparatively uncongenial to their reception.  He had not, however, accepted it without grave doubts about his fitness.  In a private letter he says: 

I confess that I should very much object to undertake a charge in which I was not invested with pretty full discretion.  According to my notions of what large schools are, founded on all I know and all I have ever heard of them, expulsion should be practised much oftener than it is.  Now, I know that trustees, in general, are averse to this plan, because it has a tendency to lessen the numbers of the school, and they regard quantity more than quality.  In fact, my opinions on this point might, perhaps, generally be considered as disqualifying me for the situation of master of a great school; yet I could not consent to tolerate much that I know is tolerated generally, and, therefore, I should not like to enter on an office which I could not discharge according to my own views of what is right.

At Rugby, Arnold from the first maintained that in the actual working of the school he must be completely independent, and that the remedy of the trustees, if they were dissatisfied, was not interference, but dismissal.  It was on this condition that he took