ance.

His life is proved to be generally longer than that of the reveller; his enjoyments are more perfect; and therefore his portion of the blessings of this world is larger, while the satisfaction which he draws from them is of a more exquisite nature, and more delightful to himself.

Nothing, therefore, is withheld from the Christian; nothing but sin. Meanwhile, pleasures the most ample, the most satisfactory which human life can admit, are his portion and his recompense-the pleasures of innocence, of temperance, of thankfulness to God, who deprives us of nothing which does not also tend to deprive us of himself. The free use of this world is permitted to us, while God is the supreme object of our thoughts and affections; while we have that love towards the Author of our happiness which transcends the love of all other things, and while we so "pass through things temporal, as not to lose the things eternal."

In all cases, then, it appears, that godliness has the promise of happiness. In the common progress of human affairs, amidst which we generally pass the longest part of life, the believer has an advantage over other men. He receives with gratitude the good which the opened hand of God pours upon him; he uses it with religious sobriety; and thus the effect of the blessing is increased, while the use itself is prolonged. Under the common evils of life, he experiences comforts and supports unknown to other men. His persuasion of a Providence teaches him that whatever befalls him, is according to the Divine will. In the hands of God are the "issues" of all things, because from him they had their beginning. He may "take away," because he hath first "given," whatever we possess. He may "kill," because he hath first "made alive." His name, therefore, is to be equally the subject of our "blessing," under evil and under good; in the moment of death, as in the midst of life itself. And that which thus invigorates the Christian, is the happy influence of the spirit of God. Hence he draws those private supports and invisible consolations which prevent him from sinking under the burden of evil. They silently and gradually raise his soul from its dejection; they dispose him to religious tranquillity, and at length impress upon him that settled rest and godly satisfaction, against which the "changes and the chances of this mortal life" shall never more prevail. But, under the pressure of extraordinary dangers and distresses arising from the maintenance of the faith, the influence of faith is still superior to the evils which it draws upon itself. The evidence of Christian hope rises as persecutions inThe immediate evil may indeed be avoided by the violation of conscience; but the believer prefers the suffering of the

crease.

body with the peace of the soul. His affliction, which is "but for a moment, is not to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in him hereafter." He, therefore, joyfully lays down this mortal life, in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal happiness through Jesus Christ.

THOMAS ARNOLD, 1795-1842.

DR. THOMAS ARNOLD was born at Cowes, Isle of Wight, on the 13th of June, 1795. He received his preparatory education at Winchester School, and went thence, in 1811, to Corpus Christi College, Oxford. In 1814, his name was placed in the first class in classical literature, and in the next year he was elected fellow of Oriel College, and he gained the chancellor's prize for the two university essays, Latin and English, for the years 1815 and 1817. In December, 1818, he was ordained deacon, at Oxford. In 1819, he settled at Laleham, where he remained for the next nine years, taking seven or eight young men as private pupils in preparation for the universities. In 1827, he was elected head master of the school at Rugby. On the death of Dr. Nares, in 1841, he was offered the Regius professorship of modern history at Oxford, which he accepted, without resigning his place at Rugby, and the very next year, 1842, on the 12th of June, he died, on the day that completed his 47th year.

It is impossible to do justice to the intellectual, moral, and religious character of this eminently great- and good man in the limits necessarily assigned to these biographical notices. No English scholar of the present century has exerted a wider or more happy influence on the literary and religious world. In whatever light we view him, either as a scholar, an historian, a schoolmaster, a theologian, or as a man, he commands our highest respect and warmest admiration.

rate.

As a scholar, Dr. Arnold was distinguished for his deep and varied learning, and for his classical attainments, which were extensive and accuHe was particularly fond of Grecian literature, and his edition of "Thucydides" gave proof of his accurate Greek scholarship, and his discriminating taste as a critic. But what was better than all, he was a Christian scholar, and aimed to make himself and his pupils look upon knowledge not as an end, but as a means to higher and more enlarged usefulness.

As a historian, he shows in his own most instructive "Lectures on Modern History," in his "History of Rome," and of " The Later Roman Commonwealth," what history ought to be, and how it should be studied. His "History of Rome" is undoubtedly the best history in the language, and to its composition the author brought the very highest qualifications of learning and of religious principle. “He saw God in history, and felt that

righteousness exalts a nation, and that sin is not merely a reproach to a people, but that it introduces rottenness and decay into its very heart."

It was as a schoolmaster, however, that Dr. Arnold was strikingly great. "Teaching was the business of his life, and in instruction his greatness was most conspicuous. His spirit was instinct with generous sympathy, which delights in contact with the freshness and ardor of youth." When he entered Rugby School, it was at a very low ebb, but it soon rose rapidly in public estimation, and the success of its pupils at the universities was marked and striking. He was not only an admirable scholar and skilful instructor, but he had that enthusiastic love for literature, and of everything that tends to exalt and purify our nature, which seldom fails to inspire with the same ardor all minds that are susceptible of it. Yet his pupils were indebted to him for something far more valuable than learning, or the love of learning; for his constant, and, for the most part, successful endeavors to implant in their minds the noblest principles, the most just sentiments, not by precept only, but by that without which precepts are generally unavailing-example.

As a theologian, Dr. Arnold was truly catholic in his views. He had little regard for systems of theology; but he went to the fountain head, and, in his interpretation and application of the Scriptures, he so signalized himself that, in the judgment of his friends, this was the sphere for which he was most highly fitted to shine with eminent usefulness. In theological controversy, he showed great ability and exerted great influence. He was a reformer in church and state, and to REFORM he consecrated his most earnest zeal.

As a man, he was remarkable for the uniform sweetness, the patience, and the forbearing meekness of his disposition. It was his constant aim to bring his religious principles into the daily practice of life, not by the continued introduction of religious phraseology, but by a single-hearted study to realize the Christian character. He was an ardent lover of truth, and when he found it, he uttered it with the utmost fearlessness. "He was an innate Christian; the bad passions might almost be said to have been omitted in his constitution. But his truth and honesty were unflinchingly regardless of his own interest, or of temporary consequences." Such is an imperfect outline of the character of this great and good man.2

1 Read an excellent article on Dr. Arnold in the 5th vol. of the "New Englander," to which I am indebted for a portion of this sketch.

"He will strike those who study him more closely, as a complete character-complete in its union of moral and intellectual gifts, and in the steady growth and development of both; for his greatness did not consist in the preeminence of any single quality, but in several remarkable powers, thoroughly leavened and pervaded by an ever-increasing moral nobleness. He was not one of those men who, beginning well, are stunted in mind and in heart at a certain age-often, perhaps, because their thoughts are at war with their feelings-because the latter are not fresh and pure enough to give vigor and manliness to the former. It was the very reverse of this with Arnold; the same holy objects on which his affections were unceasingly fixed-the same great subjects of moral and intellectual interest-the same simple and innocent pleasures are seen, as it were, sensibly growing in almost every successive letter, from the first days at Laleham to the last at Rugby. Connected with,

"Our readers must pass a day with Arnold. They will see of how homely and plain a thread, to all appearance, it was composed. Only, to make it more impressive, the day we will choose shall be his last. It differs in itself in no respect from other days, except as it is more of a holiday, since it happens to be also the concluding day of the half-year. On the morrow he was to shake his wings for Westmoreland. The morning is taken up with an examination in 'Ranke's History of the Popes.' Then come the distribution of prizes, the taking leave of the boys who are going, and all the mechanical details of finishing for the holidays; his usual walk and bath follow; dinner next, where he talked with great pleasure to several guests of his early geological studies under Buckland, and of a recent visit to Naseby with Thomas Carlyle. An interval in the evening leaves room for an earnest conversation with an old pupil on some differences in their views of the Tractarian theology; after which, the day rounds off with an annual supper to some of the sixth-form boys. Arnold retired to bed, apparently in perfect health. But before laying down his head upon the pillow, from which he was never more to raise it, he put his seal upon this busy and cheerful day by an entry in his diary, which (reading it as we now read it) seems of prophetic import. Yet, in truth, these transitions had become so familiar to him that, in passing from what was most spiritual, he was hardly conscious of the change. He kept the communication between this world and the next so freely open-angels ascending and descending-that he blended the influences of both, of things temporal and things eternal, into one consistent whole:

Saturday Evening, June 11.-The day after to-morrow is my birthday, if I am permitted to live to see it-my forty-seventh birthday since my birth. How large a portion of my life on earth is already passed! And then-what is to follow this life? How visibly my outward work seems contracting and softening away into the gentler employments of old age. In one sense, how nearly can I now say, "Vixi ;" and I thank God that, as far as ambition is concerned, it is, I trust, fully mortified. I have no desire other than to step back from my present place in the world, and not to rise to a higher. Still there are works

and, indeed, an instance of this completeness and consistency of character is the concentration of his thoughts and interests on a few great moral subjects, which, if it diminished his intellectual breadth, yet increased the intenseness of his moral and intellectual vision."

Quarterly Review, vol. lxxiv. p. 507.

"The basis of Arnold's morale reminds us of all we know of that of another celebrated schoolmaster (not very popular in his day, and no great favorite with high churchmen); we mean John Milton. There is the same purity and directness about them both; the same predominance of the graver, not to say sterner, elements; the same confidence, vehemence, and elevation. They both so lived in their great Task-Master's eye,' as to verify Bacon's observation in his Essay on Atheism'-made themselves of kin to God in spirit, and raised their nature by means of a higher nature than their own."

Edinburgh Review, vol. lxxxi. p. 202.

which, with God's permission, I would do before the night cometh, especially that great work, if I might be permitted to take part in it. But, above all, let me mind my own personal work, to keep myself pure, and zealous, and believing-laboring to do God's will, yet not anxious that it should be done by me rather than by others, if God disapproves of my doing it.'

"What a midnight epitaph! How ominous and how unconscious! How tender and sublime! He woke next morning, between five and six, in pain. It was angina pectoris. At eight o'clock he was dead!"'

THE VALUE OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION.

A reader unacquainted with the real nature of a classical education will be in danger of undervaluing it, when he sees that so large a portion of time, at so important a period of human life, is devoted to the study of a few ancient writers, whose works seem to have no direct bearing on the studies and duties of our own generation. For instance, although some provision is undoubtedly made at Rugby for acquiring a knowledge of modern history, yet the history of Greece and Rome is more studied than that of France and England; and Homer and Virgil are certainly much more attended to than Shakspeare and Milton. This appears to many persons a great absurdity, while others, who are so far swayed by authority as to believe the system to be right, are yet unable to understand how it can be so. A journal of education may not be an unfit place for a few remarks on this subject.

It may be freely confessed that the first origin of classical education affords in itself no reasons for its being continued now. When Latin and Greek were almost the only written languages of civilized man, it is manifest that they must have furnished the subjects of all liberal education. The question, therefore, is wholly changed since the growth of a complete literature in other languages; since France, and Italy, and Germany, and England, have each produced their philosophers, their poets, and their historians, worthy to be placed on the same level with those of Greece and Rome.

But, although there is not the same reason now which existed three or four centuries ago for the study of Greek and Roman literature, yet there is another no less substantial. Expel Greek and Latin from your schools, and you confine the views of the