n and English
essays in 1815 and 1817. During his later time at Oxford he took private
pupils and read extensively in the libraries. Meanwhile, he had been led
gradually to fix on his future life course. In December, 1818, he was
ordained deacon and next year settled at Laleham, where, in August,
1820, he married Mary Penrose, daughter of the rector of Fledborough,
Notts.

At Laleham he remained for nine years, coaching private pupils for the
universities. Here were born six of his nine children; the youngest
three, besides one who died in infancy, were born at Rugby. During this
period an essential change and growth of Arnold's character became
manifest. The warm feelings of his youth gave place to the fixed
earnestness and devotion which henceforth took possession of him. His
former indolent habits, his morbid restlessness and occasional weariness
of duty, indulgence of vague schemes without definite purpose,
intellectual doubts as to accepted religious beliefs--all seem to have
vanished for ever.

It was now that the religious aspect of his character came to be
emphasised. In common acts of life, public and private, the depths of
his religious convictions very visibly appeared. And while it is
impossible to understand his religious belief except through the
knowledge of his life and writings on ordinary subjects, it is
impossible on the other hand, to understand his life and writings
without bearing in mind how vivid was his realisation of those truths of
religion on which he most habitually dwelt. It was this which enabled
him to undertake labours which, without such a power, must have crushed
or enfeebled the spiritual growth which in him they seemed only to
foster. His letters at this time show better than anything else how he
was, though unconsciously to himself, maturing for the arduous duties he
afterwards undertook. It was now, too, that he first became acquainted
with Niebuhr's "History of Rome," which revolutionised his views of
history, and, later, served as a model for his own "History of Rome."

_II.--Headmaster of Rugby_

Arnold was not without his visions of ambition and extensive influence
from the first, but he liked Laleham, and always looked back with fond
regret to his time there. "I have always thought," he wrote in 1823,
"with regard to ambition, that I should like to be _aut Caesar aut
nullus;_ and as it is pretty well settled for me that I shall not be
Caesar, I am quite content to liv