The thick, dark clusters of his hair, his bushy
eyebrows and curling whiskers, his straight nose and bulky chin,
his firm and upward-curving lower lip--all these revealed a
temperament of ardour and determination. His eyes were bright and
large; they were also obviously honest. And yet--why was it? Was
it in the lines of the mouth or the frown on the forehead?--it
was hard to say, but it was unmistakable--there was a slightly
puzzled look upon the face of Dr. Arnold.
And certainly, if he was to fulfil the prophecy of the Provost of
Oriel, the task before him was sufficiently perplexing. The
public schools of those days were still virgin forests, untouched
by the hand of reform. Keate was still reigning at Eton; and we
possess, in the records of his pupils, a picture of the public
school education of the early nineteenth century, in its most
characteristic state. It was a system of anarchy tempered by
despotism. Hundreds of boys, herded together in miscellaneous
boarding-houses, or in that grim 'Long Chamber' at whose name in
after years aged statesmen and warriors would turn pale, lived,
badgered and overawed by the furious incursions of an irascible
little old man carrying a bundle of birch-twigs, a life in which
licensed barbarism was mingled with the daily and hourly study of
the niceties of Ovidian verse.
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