Theodore Walrond

“ While insisting, somewhat sternly, on a careful preparation of the prescribed lesson, if any difficulty arose in connection with it, instead of giving the explanation at once, he would place himself, so to speak, by the side of his pupils and help them to find it for themselves. Though not what is called a finished scholar, he had a strong turn for philology in its wider aspects, and a rare power of terse and spirited translation; and the ever fresh delight which he took in his favourite authors, such as Homer and Thucydides, Cicero and Virgil, was in itself a lesson to his scholars. ”

“ While maintaining the old pre-eminence of the classics its the best vehicle for the study of language — a study which seemed to him as if 'given for the very purpose of forming the human mind in youth' — he was the first to add mathematics, modern history, and modern languages to the ordinary school course. ”

“ There must be a danger that the lower parts, instead of adding strength to the higher, may usurp their place; that sympathies or antipathies may be mistaken for moral judgments, and a hasty temper for righteous indignation. The uncompromising earnestness which belongs to it is apt to give offence; but if it provokes opposition it gives the force necessary for overcoming it: and in Arnold's case, being absolutely free from all taint of self-seeking, it won for him, in a singular degree, the confidence of all with whom he was brought into close contact. ”

“ Sensitively alive to the peculiar evils incident to the free life of public schools, where a low tone may so easily be set by a few bad boys, he felt also their unique advantages if only a good tone could be infused into them. ”

“ Nothing, perhaps, gives a better idea of the man than the description of 'his delight in those long mountain walks when they would start with their provisions for the day, himself the guide and life of the party, always on the look-out how best to break the ascent by gentle stages, comforting the little ones in their falls, and helping forward those who were tired, himself always keeping with the laggers, that none might strain their strength by trying to be in front with him ”

“ Not in the universities only, but in the army and elsewhere, it came more and more to be observed that Arnold's pupils were, to a degree unusual at that time, 'thoughtful, manly-minded, and conscious of duty and obligation.' For some years, however, the increase in the numbers of the school did not keep pace with the rise in its reputation, being checked by the unpopularity of the headmaster's utterances on public matters. ”

“ With the exception perhaps of Chevalier Bunsen, the eminent Prussian minister, whose friendship, made at Rome in 1827, he counted as one of the chief blessings of his life, he knew no man altogether like-minded. ”

“ Arnold's biographer, Dean Stanley, collected and republished his 'Miscellaneous Works' in 1845, and his 'Travelling Journals, with Extracts from his Life and Letters,' in 1852. But it is chiefly through Stanley's 'Life and Correspondence,' first pubished in two volumes in 1844, and reaching its twelfth edition in 1881, that the 'hero of schoolmasters,' the champion alike of reverent faith and of independent thought, is and will be known to the world.
In person he was a little above the middle height; spare, but vigorous, and healthy without being robust. ”

“ When he was hardly six years old his father died suddenly of spasm of the heart, and his education for the next two years was committed by his mother to her sister. Miss Delafield. In 1803 he went to a school at Warminster, and thence in 1807 to Winchester. He appears to have been a shy and retiring boy, somewhat stiff and angular in character and manners, but high-principled and warm-hearted; with remarkable powers of memory; devoted to history, geography, and poetry, especially ballad poetry. ”

“ For four years he resided on his fellowship, amidst a group of the ablest men then in the university — Copleston, Davison, Whately, Keble, Hawkins, and Hampden; using this 'golden time' to store his mind and fill many manuscript volumes with the results of wide and independent reading, chiefly of original authorities, in the libraries of the place. In 1818 he was ordained deacon, and in the following year he settled at Laleham, a quiet village on the broad Thames, to take as private pupils a small number of young men preparing for the universities. ”

“ The early history of Home, in three volumes, of which the two first were mainly based on Niebuhr (London, 1838-43) . A history of the later period of the Roman commonwealth, from the end of the second Punic war to the reign of Augustus, with a life of Trajan, published posthumously in 1845, and consisting of reprints of articles that had appeared in the 'Encyclopedia Metropolitana.' Lectures on the study of modern history, delivered at Oxford in 1841 and 1842 (Oxford, 1842) . A collection of sermons in three volumes published between 1829 and 1834. ”