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.