t with flying colours, after
three weeks of a famous coach for fast men, four nights without going to
bed, and an incredible consumption of wet towels, strong cigars, and
brandy-and-water, was one of the most astonishing feats of mental
gymnastics I ever heard of!"

It must be admitted that his effect on the Universities was not very
tangible, not very positive. It was not the kind of effect which can be
expressed in figures or reported in Blue Books. One cannot stand in the
High Street of Oxford, or on King's Parade at Cambridge, and point to an
Institute, or a college, or a school of learning, and say: "Matthew
Arnold made that what it is."

His effect was of a different kind. It was written on the fleshly tables
of the heart. To Oxford men he seemed like an elder brother, brilliant,
playful, lovable, yet profoundly wise; teaching us what to think, to
admire, to avoid. His influence fell upon a thirsty and receptive soil.
We drank it with delight; and it co-operated with all the best
traditions of the place in making us lifelong lovers of romance, and
truth, and beauty. One of the keenest minds produced by Oxford between
1870 and 1880 thus summarized his effect on us: "I think he was almost
the only man who did not disappoint one."

[Illustration: Fox How, Ambleside

Dr. Thomas Arnold's holiday home.

Mrs. Arnold continued to reside at Fox How until her death, in 1873

_Photo Herbert Bell_]

As in dealing with the Universities, so also in dealing with the Public
Schools, Arnold found it difficult to liberate himself from his early
environment and prepossessions. He was the son of a Wykehamist, who had
become the greatest of Head Masters; he himself was both a Wykehamist
and a Rugbeian; he was the brother of three Rugbeians, and the father of
three Harrovians. Thus it was impossible for him to regard the Public
Schools of England with the dispassionate eye of the complete
outsider. It is true that, when he gave rein to his critical instinct,
he could not help observing that Public Schools are "precious
institutions where, for L250 a year, our boys learn gentlemanlike
deportment and cricket"; that with us "the playing-fields are the
school"; and that a Prussian Minister of Education would not permit "the
keepers of those absurd cock-pits" to examine the boys as they choose,
"and send them jogging comfortably off to the University on their lame
longs and shorts about the Calydonian Boar." But, when it came to
pr