The boyhood of this great and good man was characterised rather by freedom and honesty, a sanguine temperament, and great capability of "growth," than by any such brilliancy as might have been expected in one afterwards so distinguished.

But the aspirations after distinction he displayed, even in childhood, and his early interest in some of the subjects with which he subsequently con-nected his name, are in an eminent degree worthy of remark, study, and consideration.

"Few men of Arnold's station," it has been said, "have been so much before the public during their lifetime, and in so many ways. He was the first English editor of Thucydides, and the first accom-modator of Niebuhr to English tastes and under standings. He was also, for some fourteen years, the prince of schoolmasters on that most trying of all stages — an English public school; and he lived to stand forward almost as long an uncompromising opponent of the new form of Oxford priestcraft."

Thomas Arnold was born on the 13th of June, 1705, at West Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, where his family, originally from Lowestoff, in Suffolk, had been settled for two generations. His father, Collector of Customs at the port of Cowes, had sis children, besides the eminent scholar, whose early education was entrusted to his maternal aunt. This precise spinster watched over and directed his childish studies with affectionate care and gratified pride; and he soon began to exhibit symptoms of no ordinary intelligence. He was especially remarkable for his early attainments in history and geography. His tenacious memory, which early displayed its powers in regard to these subjects, enabled him to remember having, when three years old, received a present of Smollett's historical work as a reward for his accuracy in going through the stories connected with the various kings' reigns; and, at the same age, he used to sit at his aunt's table arranging his geographical cards, and recognising by their shape, at a glance, the different counties of the dissevered map of England.

During his residence in the Isle of Wight, which was in a season of war, he of course saw much of naval and military affairs, and was quite captivated with such scenes; indeed, they gave a colour to his powerful mind, which time could never efface. The sports in which he chiefly indulged with the few companions of his childhood were the sailing of small ships in his father's garden, and, as if his future pursuits were herein foreshadowed, acting the battles of Homer's heroes with whatever implements could be used as spear and shield, and reciting appropriate speeches from Pope's translation of the "Iliad." Before he had reached his seventh year he had composed a little tragedy, which has been preserved, and is said to show great accuracy and precision in the writing and arrangement of the acts and scenes. He always looked back upon these early years of his existence with a peculiar tenderness; and when settled in life, delighted to gather around him memorials of his father's household, treasured up every particular of his own and his forefathers' birth and parentage, and even transplanted shoots of an aged willow in his father's grounds to the places where he subsequently resided, at Laleham, Rugby, and Fox How. In the same spirit he carefully preserved and left in his own hand-writing, for the information of his children and descendants, every date and circumstance in the history of the family to which he belonged.

Arnold's father died in 1801; and, two years later, the young scholar was sent to Warminster School, in Wiltshire, with the masters of which he kept up a continual intercourse long after they had parted. He always retained a pleasant recollection of the works to which he had access in the library, and when in his professorial chair at Oxford quoted from the memory of what he had read there when he was eight years old. In 1807 he entered Winchester as a commoner, and afterwards became a scholar of the college. He had always been excessively fond of ballad poetry, much of which his new schoolfellows learned from his recitation before they had seen it in books; and his own boyish efforts at rhyme all ran in that style. From producing a play, in which his schoolfellows were introduced as the dramatis persona, and a long poem, entitled "Simon de Montfort," in imitation of "Marmion," he received the appellation of "Poet Arnold," to distinguish him from another boy of the same surname. He now diligently studied Russell's "Modern Europe;" he read Gibbon and Mitford twice before leaving school; and in his letters written at this period, which are considered like those of a person living chiefly in the company of his seniors, and reading or hearing read such books as are suited to a more advanced age, are passages highly interesting when considered in connexion with the important labours of his mature years. His manner, which afterwards became joyous and simple, was characterised by stiffness and formality at the time of his departure from Winchester. This took place in 1811; but he ever cherished a strong feeling of affection for the venerable institution, and when at Rugby would recur to his knowledge of the constitution of a public school, as acquired while taking the "Wykehamist stamp.

In his sixteenth year he was elected a scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, though opposed by several very respectable candidates. He was then a mere boy in appearance; but it soon turned out that he was quite ready and equal to taking his part in the argument of the common room. At Oxford he formed friendships which exercised a great influence on his career, and conceived an affection for the place which seems never to have faded from his heart. The inmates of the college lived on the most familiar terms with each other; they took great interest in ancient and modern literature; they debated all the exciting questions of the day; they fought over the battles and sieges of the period; and they discussed poetry, history, and other subjects, with great zeal and energy. Their habits were temperate and inexpensive; but one break-up party was held in the junior common room, at the end of each term, when their genius and merriment were freely indulged When he entered the University, Arnold, it is stated, was not a formed scholar, and his compositions hardly gave indications of the excellence he was to arrive at. The next year he was an unsuccessful competitor for the Latin verse prize. Several poems of his, written about this period, are pronounced by Mr, Justice Coleridge to be neat and pointed in expression and just in thought, but not remarkable for fancy or imagination. Long after, he told that eminent individual, that he continued the practice of verse-making "on principle," as a useful and humanising exercise. Yet, though not a poet himself, he loved the poetry of others, and was sensible of its beauties.

But his delight at that time was in Aristotle and Thucydides. He became deeply imbued with the ideas and language of the former, and his fond-ness for the latter first prompted a "Lexicon Thucy-dideum," which ended in his valuable edition of that author. Next to those he loved Herodotus, whose manner, as that of Thucydides, he had so thoroughly studied and so much enjoyed, that he could, with wonderful facility and accuracy, write narratives at pleasure in the style of either. During his resi dence at Oxford a small debating club, called the Attic Society, which was the germ of the Union was formed, and held its meetings in the rooms of the members alternately. Arnold was among its earliest members; but was an embarrassed speaker partly from his bashfulness, and partly from his repugnance to introduce anything in the slightest degree out of time or place.

His physical recreations were walking and bathing He was particularly fond of making an excursion across the country with two or three of his chosen comrades, leaving the highroad, crossing fences, and leaping or falling into ditches. Though delicate in appearance and slight in form, he was capable of walking long distances and bearing much fatigue, and while out in this way he overflowed with mirth and spirits. From his boyish days he had a great difficulty in early rising; and though this was overcome by habit, he often said that the operation was to him a daily effort.

In 1814 Arnold's name was placed in the first class in Literae Humaniores. Next year he was elected a fellow of Oriel College, which numbered among its members some of the most rising men in the University; and he gained the Chancellor's prize for the two University essays, Latin and English, for the years 1815 and 1817.

He remained at Oxford four years after the former date, taking private pupils, and reading extensively in the libraries. The privilege of doing so he never ceased to remember with satisfaction, and always attempted strongly to impress upon others the importance of duly taking advantage of it. The results of his industry still exist in a great number of manuscripts, both in the form of abstracts of works, and original sketches on history and theo-logy. He endeavoured, in his historical studies, to follow the plan, which he afterwards recommended in his lectures, of making himself thoroughly master of one period; and the fifteenth century, with Philip de Comines as his text-book, is stated as having been the chief sphere of his studies during his last years at Oxford.

In 1819, having the year previously been ordained deacon, he settled at Laleham, near Staines, where he resided for the next nine years, receiving into his house seven or eight young men as pupils to prepare them for the University. His attachment to this place was strong; and after being elected to the head-mastership at Rugby, and removing thither in 1828, he cast back many a fond, lingering look to the favourite views, the sequestered walks, the | pleasant gardens, and the quiet churchyard, which contained the ashes of some of his nearest and dearest relatives. Indeed, he long contemplated returning to it to spend his last days; but in 1832, having been induced to purchase Fox How, a small estate in Westmoreland, near Rydal Mount, he usually spent the holidays there during the thirteen years of his head-mastership at Rugby.

On the 12th of June, 1842, this "prince of school-masters" died suddenly in his forty-seventh year, and just the day before he was to set off to spend the vacation at Lis retreat in Westmoreland, having distinguished himself, not more by his learned achievements in first producing an English edition of Thucydides. and in accommodating Niebuhr's theory of the early history of Rome to English tastes and intellects, than by unwearied exertions in his career of professional usefulness, and the moral and Christian greatness, try which he was characterised.