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,