the post; and any attempt to control either the administration of the school or his own private occupations he felt bound to resist as a duty not only to himself but the master of every foundation school in England.  The remonstrances which he encountered, particularly from his fixed determination always to get rid of unpromising subjects, were vehement and numerous; but he repeatedly declared that on no other conditions could he hold his appointment, or justify the existence of the public school system in a Christian country.

“My object,” he wrote, just before taking up duty, “will be, if possible, to form Christian men, for Christian boys I can scarcely hope to make; I mean that, from the natural imperfect state of boyhood, they are not susceptible of Christian principles in their full development upon their practice, and I suspect that a low standard of morals in many respects must be tolerated amongst them, as it was on a larger scale in what I consider the boyhood of the human race.”

This is the keynote of his whole system.  As he put it, what he looked for in the school was, first, religious and moral principles; second, gentlemanly conduct; and third, intellectual ability.  Intellectual training was never for a moment underrated, but he always thought first of his charges as schoolboys who must grow up to be Christian men.  His education, in short, “was not based upon religion, but was itself religious.”  For cleverness as such, Arnold had no regard.  “Mere intellectual acuteness,” he used to say, “divested as it is, in too many cases, of all that is comprehensive and great and good, is to me more revolting than the most helpless imbecility, seeming to be almost like the spirit of Mephistopheles.”  Often when this intellectual cleverness was seen in union with moral depravity, he would be inclined to deny its existence altogether.

A mere plodding boy was, above all others, encouraged by him.  At Laleham he had once got out of patience, and spoken sharply to a pupil of this kind, when the pupil looked up in his face and said, “Why do you speak angrily, sir?  Indeed, I am doing the best that I can.”  Years afterwards he used to tell the story to his children, and said, “I never felt so much ashamed in my life—­that look and that speech I have never forgotten.”  And though it would, of course, happen that clever boys, from a greater sympathy with his understanding, would be brought into closer intercourse with him, this did not affect his feeling of respect, and even of reverence, for those who, without ability, were distinguished for high principle and industry.  “If there be one thing on earth which is truly admirable, it is to see God’s wisdom blessing an inferiority of natural powers where they have been honestly, truly and zealously cultivated.”

III.—­As Teacher and Preacher

Arnold had always been painfully impressed by the evils of the public school system, according to which a number of boys are left to form an independent society of their own, in which the influence they exert over each other is far greater than that exerted by the masters.  He writes, in 1837: