Remotely-- and yet with
an omnipresent force. As the Israelite of old knew that his
almighty Lawgiver might at any moment thunder to him from the
whirlwind, or appear before his very eyes, the visible embodiment
of power or wrath, so the Rugby schoolboy walked in a holy dread
of some sudden manifestation of the sweeping gown, the majestic
tone, the piercing glance, of Dr. Arnold. Among the lower forms
of the school his appearances were rare and transitory, 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 cheek in a moment the
slightest approach to levity'.
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