The end of the term was approaching, and to all appearance the Doctor was in excellent spirits. On June 11th, after a hard day's work, he spent the evening with a friend in the discussion of various topics upon which he often touched in his conversation the comparison of the art of medicine in barbarous and civilised ages, the philological importance of provincial vocabularies, and the threatening prospect of the moral condition of the United States. Left alone, he turned to his diary. 'The day after tomorrow,' he wrote, 'is my birthday, if I am permitted to live to see it-- my forty-seventh birthday since my birth. How large a portion of my life on earth is already passed! And then-- what is to follow this life? How visibly my outward work seems contracting and softening away into the gentler employments of old age. In one sense how nearly can I now say, "Vivi". And I thank God that, as far as ambition is concerned, it is, I trust, fully mortified; I have no desire other than to step back from my present place in the world, and not to rise to a higher. Still there are works which, with God's permission, I would do before the night cometh.' Dr. Arnold was thinking of his great work on Church and State.
Early next morning he awoke with a sharp pain in his chest. The pain increasing, a physician was sent for; and in the meantime Mrs. Arnold read aloud to her husband the Fifty-first Psalm. Upon one of their boys coming into the room, 'My son, thank God for me,' said Dr. Arnold; and as the boy did not at once catch his meaning, he added, 'Thank God, Tom, for giving me this pain; I have suffered so little pain in my life that I feel it is very good for me. Now God has given it to me, and I do so thank Him for it.' Then Mrs. Arnold read from the Prayer-book the 'Visitation of the Sick', her husband listening with deep attention, and assenting with an emphatic 'Yes' at the end of many of the sentences. When the physician arrived, he perceived at once the gravity of the case: it was an attack of angina pectoris. He began to prepare some laudanum, while Mrs. Arnold went out to fetch the children. All at once, as the medical man was bending over his glasses, there was a rattle from the bed; a convulsive struggle followed; and, when the unhappy woman, with the children, and all the servants, rushed into the room, Dr.
Arnold had passed from his perplexities forever.
There can be little doubt that what he had achieved justified the prediction of the Provost of Oriel that he would 'change the face of education all through the public schools of England'. It is true that, so far as the actual machinery of education was concerned, Dr. Arnold not only failed to effect a change, but deliberately adhered to the old system. The monastic and literary conceptions of education, which had their roots in the Middle Ages, and had been accepted and strengthened at the revival of Learning, he adopted almost without hesitation. Under him, the public school remained, in essentials, a conventional establishment, devoted to the teaching of Greek and Latin grammar. Had he set on foot reforms in these directions, it seems probable that he might have succeeded in carrying the parents of England with him. The moment was ripe; there was a general desire for educational changes; and Dr. Arnold's great reputation could hardly have been resisted. As it was, he threw the whole weight of his influence into the opposite scale, and the ancient system became more firmly established than ever.
The changes which he did effect were of a very different nature.
By introducing morals and religion into his scheme of education, he altered the whole atmosphere of public-school life.
Henceforward the old rough-and-tumble, which was typified by the regime of Keate at Eton, became impossible. After Dr. Arnold, no public school could venture to ignore the virtues of respectability. Again, by his introduction of the prefectorial system, Dr. Arnold produced far-reaching effects--effects which he himself, perhaps, would have found perplexing. In his day, when the school hours were over, the boys were free to enjoy themselves as they liked; to bathe, to fish, to ramble for long afternoons in the country, collecting eggs or gathering flowers.
'The taste of the boys at this period,' writes an old Rugbaean who had been under Arnold, 'leaned strongly towards flowers'. The words have an odd look today. 'The modern reader of "Tom Brown's Schooldays" searches in vain for any reference to compulsory games, house colours, or cricket averages. In those days, when boys played games they played them for pleasure; but in those days the prefectorial system-- the system which hands over the life of a school to an oligarchy of a dozen youths of seventeen--was still in its infancy, and had not yet borne its fruit.
Teachers and prophets have strange after-histories; and that of Dr. Arnold has been no exception. The earnest enthusiast who strove to make his pupils Christian gentlemen and who governed his school according to the principles of the Old Testament, has proved to be the founder of the worship of athletics and the worship of good form. Upon those two poles our public schools have turned for so long that we have almost come to believe that such is their essential nature, and that an English public schoolboy who wears the wrong clothes and takes no interest in football, is a contradiction in terms. Yet it was not so before Dr. Arnold; will it always be so after him? We shall see.
