Page:Eminent Victorians.djvu/218

190 and upon these young children "the chief impression," we are told, "was of extreme fear." The older boys saw more of him, but they did not see much. Outside the Sixth Form, no part of the school came into close intercourse with him; and it would often happen that a boy would leave Rugby without having had any personal communication with him at all. Yet the effect which he produced upon the great mass of his pupils was remarkable. The prestige of his presence and the elevation of his sentiments were things which it was impossible to forget. In class, every line of his countenance, every shade of his manner imprinted themselves indelibly on the minds of the boys who sat under him. One of these, writing long afterwards, has described, in phrases still impregnated with awestruck reverence, the familiar details of the scene:—"the glance with which he looked round in the few moments of silence before the lesson began, and which seemed to speak his sense of his own position"—"the attitude in which he stood, turning over the pages of Facciolati's Lexicon, or Pole's synopsis, with his eye fixed upon the boy who was pausing to give an answer"—"the pleased look and the cheerful 'thank you,' which followed upon a successful translation"—"the fall of his countenance with its deepening severity, the stern elevation of the eyebrows, the sudden 'sit down' which followed upon the reverse"—and "the startling earnestness with which he would check in a moment the slightest approach to levity."

To be rebuked, however mildly, by Dr. Arnold was a notable experience. One boy could never forget how he drew a distinction between "mere amusement" and "such as encroached on the next day's duties," nor the tone of voice with which the Doctor added "and then it immediately becomes what St. Paul calls revelling." Another remembered to his dying day his reproof of some boys who had, behaved badly during prayers. "Nowhere," said Dr. Arnold, "nowhere is Satan's work more