On a review of these various conflicting theories, which the Hindu mind has put forth at different times, to explain the most interesting problem in its history-it needs little critical skill to determine, that as far as history is concerned, these legends are all nothing worth. Except perhaps the meagre names of those of the third class, they represent no real events, they are dissociated from all actual space and time; they are simply the offspring of a lawless imagination, which found the whole past a tabula rasa, on which to paint at its will. They are dust in the balance against one fact of ethnology, or one root of the Indo-Germanic tongue. It is only from comparative philology and a rigorous crossexamination of every dialect of India, that we can hope for any real light on India's early history. We shall then perhaps be able to interpret, with something like certainty, those obsoure but constantly recurring allusions in the Veda to "dark" tribes and "white" tribes, of hostile language and religion, who were then contending for the country. It is not from native sources that any definite information is to be gained; their scattered hints can only be of use to confirm our foreign researches. In Arya and Dasyu, with their respective IndoGermanic and Turanian relations (if we may venture to speak confidently on what is still the subject of investigation and discussion) will be found the key to much, that, viewed from the Hindu side alone, is "darker than the darkest oracle." As the Veda is subjected to the rigorous scrutiny of Europe, and confronted with the other extant monuments of the old world's belief, it will be forced to break its sullen silence, and, one by But it is no spontaneous witone, yield up to us its secrets. ness,-it has no perennial gush of narrative, like the epics, and Puránas; it has closed its lips as doggedly as Iago, and only science with its systematic torture can make it speak. ART. VI-1. Tom Brown's School Days. BY AN OLD 2. Preface to the Sixth Edition of Tom Brown's School T is not alone by "sublime lives" of action that great men of some of the greatest of men have been either wholly insignificant, or full of pernicious example; the personal career of Shakespear seems to become less interesting the more we learn of it; while that of Goethe, about whom so much has been written, is chiefly deserving of study as shewing what the student should avoid. To pursue Mr. Longfellow's nautical metaphor, its brilliancy is that of a lighthouse on a fateful shore. Others there have been, such as Socrates and Samuel Johnson, who have not even influenced men by their writings, but whose mark will never be effaced, left as it was by the apparently ephemeral effect of convivial discourse. In the Constable Bourbon, and in Wallenstein (among other less remarkable cases), we have men who, with every capacity for great and good conduct, seem to have been led, principally by ill-fortune, by a mere want of common luck, into positions where they earn an imperishable, though equivocal, fame from disaster and offence. Undoubtedly a man of action is as much more entitled than a writer of equal calibre to our personal admiration, as work is more noble than words; but the world has had a few characters a very few, and of whom she was not worthy-who distinguished themselves more by the capacity for greatness than for its exhibition in any classified manner; of whom their moral aroma of character is the true embalmment, so as to attest the truth of old Shirley's saying: -the memory of the JUST "Smells sweet, and blossoms even in the dust." It is this apostolic virtue and singleness of heart that appear RUGBY IN INDIA. 66 ever-me school-master, since it may be doubted, if he ever reformed a bad boy; his death was yet felt throughout England like a personal misfortune, and the incidents of his uneventful life speedily assumed a fascination for high and low, which As we have the seems to increase with years. morable Hales," and the "judicious Hooker," so the name of the "lamented Arnold" rose at once to the lips of thousands, and bids fair to remain there. The Age felt that it had lost a teacher of no ordinary authority; more, one of those holy visitants qualified to stand between the living and the dead, Well does the writer reand bid some great Plague cease. member the feelings with which, having last beheld him in the pride of manly strength, and in a serene and saintly anger, he heard from the lips of a lower-school boy, who had returned home to the same village a day later, the words-" the Doctor is dead." How heartless seemed the warm summer air; what a glare shone in the sun-beams of that June day! It is by no means purposed to retrace the life of Dr. Arnold; that has been done by Canon Stanley, and his book is in every one's hands. To those who seek a clear resume, we may commend the notice of the work, whose name heads our paper, published in a late "Quarterly Review," and ascribed to the accomplished author of the "Hand-Book of Spain." But it is not without interest that we Anglo-Indians of 1858-the survivors of the deluge-can reflect on the man and his work. A few extracts, and a brief epitome of "Tom Brown's school days" will shew us the system of Rugby under Arnold; a few contemporaneous sketches will shew the position of Rugby in India. Tom Brown is the son of a country gentleman in the Vale of White Horse, who, after the usual incidents of a rural childhood, is sent to Rugby at the age of eleven, shortly after Previously to Arnold had assumed charge of the school. this period it had been a large grammar-school of the ordinary stamp-like Repton, Tonbridge or Shrewsbury-conducted by Dr. Wooll, a gentleman of short stature and shorter patience, immortalized by the school-boys in the epigram, "great cry and little Wooll," so constant was the wailing of the birched. The mind of Arnold was impetuous, one-sided, and eminently righteous; and the system of his predecessor, both as being inadequate and as being old, was sure to dissatisfy him. The writer well remembers a conversation he had with a relation of the Doctor, himself a Master in the school, in the course of which he (the pupil) respectfully enquired, "when the Doctor "Never" was the tutor's prompt was to be made a Bishop." reply; "he is too crotchetty." crotchetty." Arnold's measures are de scribed by Canon Stanley in the third chapter of his "Life;" and to attempt to criticize any of them may seem "Periculosæ plenum opus aleæ." It is necessary, however, to point out some details in which we think the system faulty, but in so doing we shall not be able to touch a stone, but bears signs of the builder's cunning and goodness; and it will be seen, on the whole, to have been wonderfully suited for producing brave, thoughtful men of the world, such as England wants, now and again, in her many difficulties here and elsewhere. As Arnold said, "whatever of striking good or evil happened in any part of the 'wide range of English dominion, declared on what important scenes some of them might be called upon to enter. And though the classes from whom the scholars of Rugby were recruited, are not those usually distinguished in the high places of home politics, yet even there, their influence is known to be widely felt; many of Arnold's alumni being now employed in public-school education in their turn-like the new headmaster of Marlborough, Mr. Bradley-and others engaged in writing for important periodicals, like the "Saturday Review;" but the field of the middle classes and petite noblesse of England is chiefly found in her colonies and dependencies. Arnold was not the only person who, in the reforming period of 1829, when he first went to Rugby, had a feeling against the then obtaining public-school system. Many of the liberals of those days, indeed, went further than he did. His own sentiments shall be stated in his own language. "The school," he said on first coming, "is quite enough to employ any man's love of reform; and it is much pleasanter to think of evils which you may yourself hope to relieve, than those with regard to which you can give nothing but vain wishes and opinions. "There is enough of Toryism in my nature to make me very apt to sleep contentedly over things as they are, and therefore I hold it to be most true kindness, when any one directs my attention to points in the school, which are alleged to be going on ill." "The perpetual 'succession of changes," continues the biographer, "which ' resulted from this, was by many objected to as excessive, and 'calculated to endanger the stability of his whole system. He wakes every morning, it was said of him, with the impression that everything is an open question." But rapid as might be the alterations to which the details of his system were subjected, the general principles remained fixed. What these were we are now to see. Beginning with an effort to "have nothing to do with boar ders" (to Mr. Coleridge, April 24, 1828,) he soon came to make all his Masters keep boarding houses. This was one blow aimed at the freedom from surveillance, which was so common an objection to the old system. But he went farther; the sixth form was to carry into the playing-field, the same supervision that was to be exercised by the Masters in the houses. At first he had his doubts, but the public opinion ran strongly against a plan which had so many features of tyranny and espionage; and "now, that the whole system was denoun'ced as cruel and absurd, he delighted to stand forth as its cham'pion." By so doing he obtained a class of "perera between the Masters and the mass of the boys" but his Præpostors were too often "stuck-up" young prigs with grey heads on green shoulders, "anticipating," he said in a sermon, " the common time of manhood," who were looked upon as a kind of Masters, a common foe, that is, to be deluded and eluded. The Præpostors-unfortunatest of words-obtained habits of command, but lost, sometimes, the genial sympathies of their time of life; and their advantages were gained at the expense of many of the little community. But, farther, there were other advantages of "the system," gained à coup de garçon; that is to say, many boys, of whom "there was not one in the set whom you would set down as a bad fellow if taken alone," were yet viewed as if he saw "the devil in the midst of them," and ruthlessly dismissed to their bewildered parents. This was really unfair, for it enabled the Doctor to produce splendid results by packing and picking, instead of shining upon the evil and upon the good, as other influences in the world have to work, resulting, of course, in a more average out-turn. It is no mean praise to say that Arnold's success was brilliant, but how much more good he would have done, if he had aimed lower, but in a wider range! A cause of this difficulty, too, could have been remedied by a simple bye-law. He opposed the admission of boys under the age of ten, he should have likewise declined to receive those above thirteen. It is this class of lads, coming from home tuition or from private schools with formed habits, upon whom public-school teaching and associations are so much thrown away. 99 One of his "crotchets was a belief that moral and intellectual excellence are usually united. Another was that the ἀρετὴ γυμναστική and ἀρετὴ μουσικὴ of the Greeks should be united. And the result of this has been, on the whole, excellent. Facetious enemies did not fail to describe this as the system. præposterous' |