testimony and action; and what he did will never be forgotten. His life was a public blessing while it lasted; and it has now become more so since his death; for his virtues and his toils are not now, as when he lived, obscured by the local and temporary strifes which always prevent men from doing justice to each other, and vitiate the noblest perspective of character, rendering prominent what need scarcely be seen, and hiding the grandest features behind mere magnified accidents.'

The prediction of Dr. Hawkins, Provost of Oriel, that if Arnold were elected to the head mastership of Rugby he would change the face of education all through the public schools of England, has been verified; and the Isle of Wight, which still keeps the grey old Manor-house of Mottistone, built in 1557 by the Chekes, from whose stock sprang Sir John Cheke, immortalized by Milton as the tutor of Edward VI, will hold a more important position in scholastic annals, as being the birthplace of the great Christian reformer of the higher education of England in the nineteenth century.

Secondly, let us consider Arnold as one of the earliest leaders in what may be called for convenience sake the Broad Church Movement. That chapter in the history of the English Church has yet to be written. We live too near it (standing, as it were, in the very thick of the struggle) to be able to appreciate all the influences of that tide of religious thought. Besides, it would be out of place to discuss here the merits of those particular views, or their demerits, as they are esteemed by the mass of the clergy and a large majority of the religious world, whether Churchmen or Nonconformists. One fact is certain. Thomas Arnold was, if ever there was one, a Broad Churchman. Our own impartial, learned, and highly respected Diocesan, speaking at the Croydon Church Congress, said that he was sometimes called a High Churchman, sometimes a Low Churchman, sometimes a Broad Churchman. There could be no mistake as to what the late head master of Rugby and Professor of Modern History at Oxford was. No High Churchman or Evangelical has ever claimed him. The modern representatives of the school of religious teaching to which Arnold belonged are far from endorsing all his views in Church and

State. The training of a schoolmaster, and the dealing with the immature minds and unsettled purposes of boys, does not fit a man for grappling with the complications of ecclesiastical and political arrangements. It must be kept in mind that Arnold died at the comparatively early age of forty-seven. The wider knowledge of men and of affairs which he might have gained after his projected retirement from the headmastership of Rugby would probably have modified his eagerness to speak out whatever was in his mind, and toned down the violence of the language which he often used in speaking of the subjects and events of the day. Peremptoriness of manner is the besetting weakness of the pedagogue. The ordinary aversion of the clergy for schoolmaster bishops takes its rise from this peculiarity. Still, the adherents of those broader views of religious truth, which are gradually finding acceptance among a small number of the clergy and a far larger proportion of the laity, have reason to be most grateful for Arnold's pioneering work. He presented to the world the spectacle of a clergyman of not only blameless, but also of holy, life.

The people of this generation are beginning to forget what a brand of condemnation was affixed by men of his own profession to those among their own body who held liberal opinions, whether in religion or politics. A pious Nonconformist minister was expected to be, at any rate, a political liberal; but an Anglican clergyman who pursued the same course was considered a traitor to his order. When Stanley's Life of Arnold first came out, with its extracts from Arnold's diary, showing in his own language 'the rush of love in his heart towards God and Christ,' a member of the House of Commons said to me, 'the great value of this book consists in its proving that a man may be a sincere Christian, while holding liberal opinions in matters political and ecclesiastical.' This estimate has proved true; a marked change has taken place in public opinion, in which Arnold's Life and Correspondence led the way. A stop has been placed to those cruel imputations of disloyalty to the faith professed by him that troubled the noble spirit of Frederick Denison Maurice. Bishops in their charges, and speakers at Church Congresses, now cite the names of Arnold and Maurice, in conjunction

with those of Charles Simeon and John Keble, as a proof of the comprehensiveness of the Church in which they minister. Broad Churchmen are not looked upon as the Bashibazouks of the Church militant; they form a portion of the regular forces, and are a division of that army whose warfare is waged against sin and evil and all unrighteousness.

The clergy of the Isle of Wight need not hesitate to follow the precedent that is set them. Legh Richmond and Samuel Wilberforce at once occur to the mind as having belonged to the island clergy, and as being the representatives of the two great historic parties into which the Church of England has since the Reformation been more or less divided. Thomas Arnold, although his work in life did not lie in his native island, has a better title to citizenship from the fact of his birth, than either of those two good men. All three may be claimed as the chief ornaments of the clerical annals of the Isle of Wight at any rate in these later days. Whatever our differences of opinion, we may say with satisfaction that in their various spheres of duty they did honour to their native or adopted island.

It does not fall within the scope of this letter to review Arnold as an author. History and theology-that is, man, and man's relation to God-were his favourite studies. His great work, and the one by which he will be best remembered, is The History of Rome. Though unfinished, it stands a noble monument to his memory. The well-known sketches of the genius and character of Hannibal, and Hannibal's great rival, Scipio Africanus, may take rank with the masterpieces of English historical description. Arnold's highest qualities were shown more as a man of action than of books. It was not his wish to be a man of books. When Wordsworth remarked of Southey towards the close of his life that it was painful to see how completely dead he was become to all but books, Dr. Arnold said afterwards that the remark alarmed him. I could not help saying to myself am I in danger of becoming like him? Shall I ever lose my interest in things, and retain my interest in books only?'

This attempt to bring one of the most notable men of the island before my readers will have done its work, if it should induce any of those who have read Stanley's Life and Corre

spondence of Arnold to renew their acquaintance with that most interesting biography, or if they have not read it to do so at once. The book itself ought to find a place on the shelves of every village library, with which the rural parishes of the Isle of Wight have been endowed by the munificence of Mr. Seely. More wholesome reading cannot be found than this book of Arnold's favourite pupil, written under the inspiration of that open loving heart' which, as Mr. Carlyle truly says in his Essay on Biography, 'is the beginning of all knowledge.'

December, 1877.

SIR ARTHUR WELLESLEY, KNIGHT OF THE BATH, M.P. FOR NEWPORT, I.W., 1807-1809.

NEWPORT shares with the borough of Rye, one of the Cinque Ports, the honour of having given a seat in the Lower House of the United Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland to the great Duke of Wellington, while he was still a commoner. The duke's first appearance as a legislator was in the moribund Irish Parliament, where in 1790, having just come of age, he was returned as a member for the family borough of Trim in the county of Meath. Trim, of which the name occurs so often in Dean Swift's journals, is an Irish town-dirty, shabby, and wretched. Here stands a castle, one of the largest and most important built by the AngloNormans in Ireland, and also a pillar erected in honour of the Duke of Wellington, whose birthplace of Dangan Castle lies not far off. The young lieutenant-colonel who had been gazetted under the name of Wesley, which he retained till the name was changed into Wellesley by his brother the Marquis Wellesley, took part in the proceedings of the Irish Parliament of 1790, which had been studying French revolutionary politics. With a curious foreshadowing of his future career as a statesman the youthful member for Trim supported the concessions to the Roman Catholics, and opposed Parliamen

tary Reform. Happily better things were in store for Colonel Wellesley than the paltry squabbles of Irish squireens and their amenities of language. The outbreak of the war with revolutionary France called him away from the old Irish Parliament House, where before the Union the Irish representatives

'Sat in grand committee

How to plague and starve the city.'

In 1794 Colonel Wellesley in command of the 33rd regiment sailed from Cork for Flanders on his first active service to join the British army under the Duke of York.

In 1798, just when the barracks at Parkhurst, I.W., were erected and received their name Albany out of compliment to the Duke of York and Albany, the Earl of Mornington, better known by his subsequent title of Marquis Wellesley, Colonel Wellesley's elder brother, arrived at Calcutta. At the opening of this present century the political world and the newspapers were talking almost as much of Lord Wellesley's subsidiary system and the Mahratta War as of Buonaparte and the illness of good old George III. The restless ambition of the great Mahomedan usurper of Mysore had been stimulated by revolutionary France, and Tippoo had provoked the hostility of the English by an unjustifiable attack on one of their allies. Lord Wellesley's administration was rendered splendid by the victories of his brother Arthur, for which the inquiring reader must turn to the military annals of our Indian Empire. War is always popular in India, but Lord Wellesley had been playing that costly game with such success that he had brought our Indian Empire to the verge of bankruptcy. As it was, had he not possessed the services of so able a general as his brother, the results of his military policy might have been unfavourable. In 1805 Sir Arthur Wellesley, for he had been appointed by the king Knight Companion of the Order of the Bath, returned to England. In 1806 he was elected member for the borough of Rye, and from his seat in the House of Commons defended the administration of his brother in India. A certain Mr. Paul with the assistance of Sir Philip Francis and his friends had been busy in preparing charges against the Indian administration of the