of English shores as we neared the mouth of the Thames; and then the dismal inn by the docks where we first took shelter. The dreary room where we children slept the first night, its dingy ugliness and its barred windows, still come back to me as a vision of horror. Next day, like angels of rescue, came an aunt and uncle, who took us away to other and cheerful quarters, and presently saw us off to Westmorland. The aunt was my godmother, Doctor Arnold's eldest daughter then the young wife of William Edward Forster, a Quaker manufacturer, who afterwards became the well-known Education Minister of 1870, and was Chief Secretary for Ireland in the terrible years 1880-82. To my mother and her children, Fox How and its inmates represented much. that was new and strange. My mother was the granddaughter of one of the first Governors of Tasmania, Governor Sorell, who was probably of French descent; and she had been brought up in the colony, except for a brief schooling at Brussels. Of her personal beauty in youth we children heard much, as we grew up, from her old Tasmanian friends and kinsfolk who would occasionally drift across us; and I see, as though I had been there, a scene often described to me my mother playing Hermione in the "Winter's Tale, at Government House when Sir William Denison was Governor a vision, lovely and motionless, on her pedestal, till at the words "Music! awake her! Strike!" she kindled into life. left those who till then, under a great Rested as under the boughs Bare, unshaded, alone. He had been his father's special favorite among the elder children, as shown by some verses in my possession addressed to him as a small boy, at different times, by "the Doctor." Those who know their Tom Brown's Schooldays will perhaps remember the various passages in the book where the softer qualities of the man whom "three hundred reckless childish boys" feared with all their hearts, "and very little besides in heaven or earth," are made plain, without any sentimentality. Arthur's illness, for instance, when the little fellow, who has been at death's door, tells Tom Brown, who is at last allowed to see him"You can't think what the Doctor's like when one's ill. He said such brave and tender and gentle things to me I felt quite light and strong after it, and never had any more fear." Or East's talk with the Doctor, when the lively boy of many scrapes has a moral return upon himself and says to his best_friend—“You can't think how kind and gentle he was, the great grim man, whom I've feared more than anybody on earth. When I stuck, he lifted me, just as if I'd been a little child. And he seemed to know all I'd felt, and to have gone through it all." This tenderness and charm of a strong man, which in Stanley's biography is specially mentioned as growing more and more visible in the last months of his life, was always there for his children. of In a letter written in 1828 to his sister, when my father as a small child not yet five was supposed to be dying, Arnold says, trying to steel himself against the bitterness of coming loss--"I might have loved him, had he lived, too dearlyyou know how deeply I do love him now." And three years later, when "little Tom," on his eighth birthday, had just said wistfully-with a curious foreboding instinct-"I think that the eight years I have now lived will be the happiest of my life"-Arnold, painfully struck by the words, wrote some verses upon them which I still possess. "The Doctor" was no poet, though the best My father was the second son of Doctor Arnold of Rugby, and the younger brother by only eleven months Matthew Arnold. On that morning of June 12, 1842, when the Headmaster who in fourteen years' rule at Rugby had made himself so conspicuous a place, not merely in the public school world, but in English life generally, arose, in the words of his poet son-to tread In the summer morning, the road- -my father, a boy of eighteen, was in the house, and witnessed the fatal attack of angina pectoris which, in two hours, cut short a memorable career, and of his historical prose-the well-known passage in the Roman History, for instance, on the death of Marcellus has many of the essential notes of poetrypassion, strength, music. But the gentle Wordsworthian quality of his few essays in verse will be perhaps interesting to those who are aware of him chiefly as The answer, of course, in the mouth of a Christian teacher is that in Christianity alone is there both present joy and future hope. The passages in Arnold's most intimate diary, discovered after his death, and published by Dean Stanley, show what the Christian faith was to my grandfather, how closely bound up with every action and feeling of his life. The impression made by his conception of that faith, as interpreted by his own daily life, upon a great school, and, through the many strong and able men who went out from it, upon English thought and feeling, is a part of English religious history. But curiously enough the impression upon his own sons appeared, at any rate, to be less strong and lasting than in the case of others. I mean, of course, in the matter of opinion. The famous father died, and his children had to face the world without his guiding hand. Matthew and Tom, William and Edward, the four eldest sons, went in due time to Oxford, and the youngest boy into the Navy. My grandmother made her home at Fox How under the shelter of the fells, with her four daughters, the youngest of whom was only eight when their father died. The devotion of all the nine children to their mother, to each other, and to the common home was never weakened for a moment by the varieties of opinion that life was sure to bring out in the strong brood of strong parents. But the development of the two elder sons at the University was probably very different from what it would have been had their father lived. Neither of them, indeed, ever showed, while there, the smallest tendency to the "Newmanism" which Arnold of Rugby had fought with all his powers; which he had denounced with such vehemence in the Edinburgh article on "The Oxford Malignants." My father was at Oxford all through the agitated years which preceded Newman's secession from the Anglican communion. He had rooms in University College in the High Street, a stone's throw from St. Mary's, in which John Henry Newman, then its Vicar, delivered Sunday after Sunday those sermons which will never be forgotten by the Anglican Church. But my father only once crossed the street to hear him, and was then repelled by the mannerism of the preacher. Matthew Arnold occasionally went, out of admiration, my father used to say, for that strange Newmanic power of words, which in itself fascinated the young Balliol poet, who was to produce his first volume of poems two years after Newman's secession to the Church of Rome. But he was never touched in the smallest degree by Newman's opinions. He and my father and Arthur Clough, and a few other kindred spirits, lived indeed in quite another world of thought. They discovered George Sand, Emerson and Carlyle; and orthodox Christianity no longer seemed to them the sure refuge that it had always been to the great teacher who trained them as boys. There are many allusions of many dates in the letters of my father and uncle to each other, as to their common Oxford passion for George Sand. Consuelo, in particular, was a revelation to the two young men brought up under the "earnest' influence of Rugby. It seemed to open to them a world of artistic beauty and joy of which they had never dreamed; and to loosen the bands of an austere conception of life, which began to appear to them too rigid for the facts of life. Wilhelm Meister, read in Carlyle's translation at the same time, exercised a similar liberating and enchanting power upon my father. The social enthusiasms of George Sand also affected him greatly, strengthening whatever he had inherited of his father's generous discontent with an iron world, where the poor suffer too much and work too hard. And this discontent, when the time came for him to leave Oxford, assumed a form which startled his friends. He had done very well at Oxford, taking his two First Classes with ease, and was offered a post in the Colonial Office immediately on leaving the University. But the time was full of schemes for a new heaven and a new earth, wherein should dwell equality and righteousness. The storm of '48 was preparing in Europe; the Corn Laws had fallen; the Chartists were gathering in England. To settle down to the old humdrum round of Civil Service promotion seemed to my father impossible. This revolt of his, and its effect upon his friends, of whom the most intimate was Arthur Clough, has left its mark on Clough's poem, the "Vacation Pastoral," which he called "The Bothie of Tober-naVuolich," or, as it runs in my father's old battered copy which lies before me"Tober-na-Fuosich." The Philip of the poem, the dreamer, and democrat, who says to Adam the Tutor— Alas, the noted phrase of the prayer-book Doing our duty in that state of life to which God has called us, Seems to me always to mean, when the lit tle rich boys say it, Standing in velvet frock by Mama's brocaded flounces, Eying her gold-fastened book, and the chain. and watch at her bosom, Seems to me always to mean, Eat, drink, and never mind others -was in broad outline drawn from my father, and the impression made by his idealist, enthusiastic youth upon his comrades. And Philip's migration to New Zealand at the end-when he rounded the sphere to New Zealand, There he hewed and dug; subdued the earth and his spirit -was certainly suggested by my father's similar step in 1847, the year before the poem appeared. Only in my father's life there had been as yet no parallel to the charming love-story of "The Bothie." His love-story awaited him on the other side of the world. He writes to his mother in August 1847 from the Colonial Office: Everyone whom I meet pities me for having to return to London at this dull season, but to my own feelings, it is not worse than at other times. The things which would make me loathe the thought of passing my life or even several years in London, do not depend on summer or winter. It is the chronic, not the acute ills of London life which are real ills to me. I meant to have talked to you again before I left home about New Zealand, but I could not find a good opportunity. I do not think you will be intention though you may think me wrong, surprised to hear that I cannot give up my you will believe that no cold-heartedness toward home has assisted me in framing my resolution. Where or how we shall meet on this side the grave will be arranged for us by a wiser will than our own. To me however strange and paradoxical it may sound, this going to New Zealand is become a work of faith, and I cannot but go through with it. A little later he writes to her in vague exalted words of the "equality" and "brotherhood" to which he looks forward in the new land; winding up with an account of his life in London, its daily work at the Colonial Office, his walks, the occasional evenings at the Opera where he worships Jenny Lind, his readings and practisings in his lodgings. My poor father! He little knew what he was giving up, or the real conditions of the life to which he was going. For though the Philip of "The Bothie" may have "hewed and dug" to good purpose in New Zealand, success in colonial farming was a wild and fleeting dream in my father's case. He was born for Academic life and a scholar's pursuits. He had no practical gifts, and knew nothing whatever of land or farming. He had only courage, youth, sincerity, and a charming presence which made him friends at sight. His mother, indeed, with her gentle wisdom, put no obstacles in his way. On the contrary, she remembered that her husband had felt a keen imaginative interest in the colonies, and had bought small sections of land near Wellington, which his second son now proposed to take up and farm. But some of the old friends of the family felt and expressed consternation. In particular Baron Bunsen, then Prussian Ambassador to England, Arnold of Rugby's dear and faithful friend, wrote a letter of earnest and affectionate remonstrance to the would-be colonist. Let me quote it, if only that it may remind me of days long ago, when it was still possible for a strong and tender friendship to exist between a Prussian and an Englishman! Pray, my dear young friend, do not reject the voice of a man of nearly sixty years, who has made his way through life under much greater difficulties perhaps than you imagine-who was your father's dear friend -who feels deeply attached to all that bears the honored and blessed name of Arnold— who in particular had your father's promise that he would allow me to offer to you, after I had seen you in 1839, something of that care and friendship he had bestowed upon Henry-(Bunsen's own son)-do not reject the warning voice of that man, if he entreats you solemnly not to take a precipitate step. Give yourself time. Try a change of scene. Go for a month or two to France or Germany. I am sure you wish to satisfy your friends that you are acting wisely, considerately, in giving up what you have. Spartam quam nactus es, orna-was Niebuhr's word to me when once, about 1825, wearied with diplomatic life, I resolved to throw up my place, and go—not to New Zealand, but to a German university. Let me say that concluding word to you and believe me, my dear young friend Your sincere and affectionate friend P.S. If you feel disposed to have half an hour's quiet conversation with me alone, pray come to-day at six o'clock, and then dine with us quietly at half-past six. I go to-morrow to Windsor Castle for four days. Nothing could have been kinder, nothing more truly felt and meant. But the young make their own experience, and my father, with the smiling open look which disarmed opposition, and disguised all the time a certain stubborn independence of will, characteristic of him through life, took his own way. He went to New Zealand, and now that it was done, the interest and sympathy of all his family followed him. But of course the inevitable happened. After a few valiant but quite futile attempts to clear his land with his own hands, or with the random labor he could find to help him, the young colonist fell back on the education he had held so cheap in England, and bravely took school-work wherever in the rising townships of the infant colony he could find it. Meanwhile his youth and his pluck, and his Oxford distinctions, had attracted the kindly notice of the Governor, Sir George Grey, who offered him his private secretaryship-one can imagine the twinkle in the Governor's eye, when he first came across my father building his own hut on his section outside Wellington! The offer was gratefully refused. But another year of New Zealand life brought second thoughts. The exile begins to confess his "loneliness" in his letters home, and to realize that it is "collision" with other kindred minds that "kindles the spark of thought, and it is in the eye of a dear and true friend that one sees a whole world of possibilities opening before one.' A few months later, Sir William Denison, the newly appointed Governor of Van Diemen's Land, hearing that a son of Arnold of Rugby, an Oxford First |