Arnold was never in any danger of
losing his sense of moral evil. If the landscapes of Italy only
served to remind him of it, how could he forget it among the boys
at Rugby School? The daily sight of so many young creatures in
the hands of the Evil One filled him with agitated grief. 'When
the spring and activity of youth,' he wrote, 'is altogether
unsanctified by anything pure and elevated in its desires, it
becomes a spectacle that is as dizzying and almost more morally
distressing than the shouts and gambols of a set of lunatics.'
One thing struck him as particularly strange: 'It is very
startling,' he said, 'to see so much of sin combined with so
little of sorrow.' The naughtiest boys positively seemed to enjoy
themselves most. There were moments when he almost lost faith in
his whole system of education, when he began to doubt whether
some far more radical reforms than any he had attempted might not
be necessary, before the multitude of children under his charge--
shouting and gambolling, and yet plunged all the while deep in
moral evil-- could ever be transformed into a set of Christian
gentlemen. But then he remembered his general principles, the
conduct of Jehovah with the Chosen People, and the childhood of
the human race. No, it was for him to make himself, as one of his
pupils afterwards described him, in the words of Bacon, 'kin to
God in spirit'; he would rule the school majestically from on
high.
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