at all about it. But we
must take the evil of our system along with the good. Abroad probably a
Minister might have known more about my performances; but then abroad I
doubt whether I should ever have survived to perform them. Under the
strict bureaucratic system abroad, I feel pretty sure that I should have
been dismissed ten times over for the freedom with which on various
occasions I have exposed myself on matters of Religion and Politics. Our
Government here in England takes a large and liberal view about what it
considers a man's private affairs, and so I have been able to survive as
an Inspector for thirty-five years; and to the Government I at least owe
this--to have been allowed to survive."

For thirty-five years then he served his country as an Inspector of
Elementary Schools, and the experience which he thus gained, the
interest which was thus awoke in him, suggested to him some large and
far-reaching views about our entire system of National Education. It is
no disparagement to a highly-cultivated and laborious staff of public
servants to say that he was the greatest Inspector of Schools that we
have ever possessed. It is true that he was not, as the manner of some
is, omnidoct and omnidocent. His incapacity to examine little girls in
needlework he frankly confessed; and his incapacity to examine them in
music, if unconfessed, was not less real. "I assure you," he said to the
Westminster Teachers, "I am not at all a harsh judge of myself; but I
know perfectly well that there have been much better inspectors than I."
Once, when a flood of compliments threatened to overwhelm him, he waved
it off with the frank admission--"Nobody can say I am a punctual
Inspector." Why then do we call him the greatest Inspector that we ever
had? Because he had that most precious of all combinations--a genius and
a heart. Trying to account for what he could not ignore--his immense
popularity with the masters and mistresses of the schools which he
inspected--he attributed part of it to the fact that he was Dr. Arnold's
son, part to the fact that he was "more or less known to the public as
an author"; but, of personal qualifications for his office, he
enumerated two only, and both eminently characteristic: "One is that,
having a serious sense of the nature and function of criticism, I from
the first sought to see the schools as they really were; thus it was
felt that I was fair, and that the teachers had not to apprehend from me