Rugby Days. 49 



gentlemen in the first instance, and good 

 scholars in the second. " The business of a 

 schoolmaster," he used to say, " no less than 

 that of a parish minister, is the care of souls." 

 It is impossible to conceive anything which 

 would have filled him with more horror and 

 alarm than the Convention of Head Masters 

 at Merchant Taylors School in December, 

 1892, at which it was seriously debated 

 whether religion had anything to do with 

 public school education. In opposition to 

 this Pagan theory, Dr. Arnold held that his 

 pupils ought to be treated as boys whom he 

 desired to make fit for growing up to be 

 Christian soldiers. His plan of education, 

 in short, was not so much based on religion, 

 as in itself religious. " He would,''" writes 

 Dean Stanley, "dwell on the satisfaction he 

 had in being head of a society where noble 

 and honourable feelings were encouraged, or 

 on the disgrace which he felt in hearing of 

 acts of disorder, selfishness, treachery or 

 violence ; or, again, on the trust which he 

 placed in the honour of his boys as gentle- 

 men, and the baseness of any instance in 

 which that trust was abused. ' Is this a 

 4 



