ARNOLD, THOMAS, D.D., bead-master of Rugby schoOl, and the author of a History of Rome, was b. June 13, 1795, at west Cowes, in the Isle of Wight. In 1803 he was sent to Warminster school, in Wiltshire, but was removed in 1807 to the public school of Winchester, where he remained till 1811, when he was elected a scholar of Corpus Christi college, Oxford. In 1815 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. As a boy, we are told he was shy and retired; as a youth, disputatious, and somewhat bold and unsettled in his opinions; but before he left Oriel, be had won the good opinion of a collegewhich at that time boasted of such names as Copleston, H Davison, Whately, Keble, Dawkins, and Hampden. He took deacon's orders in 1818, and the year after settled at Laleham, near Staines, where he occupied himself in pre paring pupils for the university. In 1820 he married Mary, youngest of the Rev. John Penrose, rector of Fledborough, in Nottinghamshire, and sister of one of his earliest school and college friends, Trevenen Penrose. About ten years were spent in this quiet and comparatively obscure life; he was preparing himself for the arduous post he afterwards occupied; he was maturing his opinions, and he had also already commenced his great literary undertaking, the History of Rome. It was a period which he himself was accustomed to look back upon with some feeling of regret. His letters at this epoch reveal to us a fine ambitious spirit bending cheerfully to the task of tuition, more useful than glorious; they also prove to us that those views of a religious and political character which afterwards distinguished him, were being matured in the privacy of Laleham. " I have long had in my mind," he thus writes to a Mr. Black stone, "a work on Christian politics, or the application of the gospel to the state of man as a citizen, in which the whole. question of a religious establishment, and time edu cation proper for Christian members of a Christian commonwealth, would naturally find a place. It would embrace also an historical sketch of the pretended conversion of the kingdoms of the world to the kingdom of Christ in the 4th and 5th centuries, which I look upon as one of the greatest tours d'adresse that Satan ever played mean that by inducing kings and nations to conform nominally to Christianity, and thus to get into their hands the of Christian society, he has in a great measure suc ceeded in keeping out the peculiar principles of that society from any extended sphere of operation, and insuring the ascendency of his own." He here expresses, in a some what sportive and familiar manner, the great principle which he afterwards contended for with so much earnestness, that there should be a Christian laity, a Christian legis lature, a Christian government; by which he did not mean a system of laws or govern ment formed in the manner of the Puritans, out of texts of Scripture, rashly applied, but imbued with the spirit of the New Testament, and of the teaching of Christ.
It was at Laleham also that A. first became acquainted with IN iebuhr's History of Rome. This was an era in his life. It produced a revolution in his historical views, and his own History of Rome became modeled almost too faithfully on that of the great German.
. From Laleham he was called to undertake the arduous duties of the head-mastership of Rugby school. On these he entered Aug., 1828. Our space does not permit us to dwell upon the details of that system of public education which he perhaps carried to its perfection. We can only take notice of the high tone, moral and religious, which he preserved amongst the boys. He had the tact to make himself both loved and feared. He.guided with great dexterity the public opinion of the school. the higher forms,"
says his biographer, "any attempt at further proof of an assertion was Immediately checked. `If you say so, that is quite enough; of course I believe your word;' and there grew up in consequence a general feeling that it was a shame to tell A. a lie—he always believes one." On one occasion, when he had been compelled to send away several boys, he said: " It is not necessary that this should be a school of 300, or 100, or of 50 boys, but it is necessary that it should be a school of Christian gentlemen." But the school was very far from occupying the whole energies of A. The History of Rome went on; he took part in all the great questions of the day, political and theological. In politics he was a whig, without being fettered—as we need hardly say— by the ties of party. In the theological discussions of the day, he was chiefly dis tinguished by the broad views he had adopted of the nature of a Christian church. As already intimated, it was his leading idea that a Christian people and a Christian church ought to be synonymous expressions. He would never tolerate that use of the word church which limited it to the clergy, or which implied in the clergy any peculiar sacredness, or any traces of mediatorial function. The priest was unknown to him in the Christian community; this placed him at once in antagonism to the high church party; and even clergymen of the loft church complained that he did not set sufficient value on their sacred order. But all men, of whatever party, admitted and admired the zeal with which he taught that the full spirit of Christianity should permeate the whole of our civil or political life. If he seemed to lower the altitude of the clergy, it was only because he would raise the general level of the laity. He was convinced that "the founders of our present constitution in church and state did truly consider them to be identical, the Christian nation of England to be the church of England; the head of that nation to be, for that very reason, the head of the church." It may be doubted whether this is quite historically correct; but it certainly presents a noble theory to the imagination.
In domestic life, Dr. A. was most happy; here lie was distinguished by unfailing cheerfulness and amiability. In 1832, he purchased Fox How, a small estate between Rydal and Ambleside, and it was in this charming retreat that he enjoyed in the vaca tions, amongst the family circle, his own uninterrupted studies. Fox How has become a classical spot to every tourist.
For a brief time lie held a place in the senate of the London university; he resigned the seat on finding that lie could not introduce some measures which he had at heart. In the year 1842, he received from lord Melbourne the offer of the regius professorship of modern history at Oxford. This appointment he accepted with peculiar gratification. He delivered some introductory lectures, which were heard with enthusiastic interest; and it was his intention, on his retirement from Rugby, to enter with zeal upon the duties of his professorship. But this and all other literary enterprises were cut short by a sudden and most painful death. The last vacation was at hand, the journey to Fox How was to be taken in a few days, when he was seized with a fatal attack of spasm of the heart. Few biographies end more abruptly or more mournfully; but the sufferer met his death with perfect fortitude and the full hope of a Christian. He died June 12, 1842. His principal works are five volumes of sermons; the History of Rome (3 vols.), broken off by his death at the end'of the second Punic war; and an edition of 7hucydides. See Life and Correspondence of A., by Rev. A. P. Stanley, M.A., now dean of Westminster (1845).