It is possible, on the other hand, that Thirlwall may have sacrificed a little too much, considering his age and its demands, to mere dispassionate dignity. He is seldom picturesque, and indeed he never tries to be so. But to a scholarship naturally far superior to Grote's, he united a much fairer and more judicial mind, and the faculty of writing--instead of loose stuff not exactly ungrammatical nor always uncomely, but entirely devoid of any grace of style--an excellent kind of classical English, but slightly changed from the best eighteenth century models. And he had what Grote lacked, the gift of seeing that the historian need not--nay, that he ought not to--parade every detail of the arguments by which he has reached his conclusions; but should state those conclusions themselves, reserving himself for occasional emergencies in which process as well as result may be properly exhibited. It is fair to say, in putting this curious pair forward as examples respectively of the popular and scholarly methods of historical writing, that Grote's learning and industry were very much more than popular, while Thirlwall's sense and style might with advantage have put on, now and then, a little more pomp and circumstance. But still the contrast holds; and until fresh discoveries like that of the _Athenian Polity_ accumulate to an extent which calls for and obtains a new real historian of Greece, it is Thirlwall and not Grote who deserves the first rank as such in English. Intimately connected with all these historians in time and style, but having over them the temporary advantage of being famous in another way, and the, as some think, permanent disadvantage of falling prematurely out of public favour, was Thomas Arnold. He was born at Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, on 13th June 1795, and was educated at Winchester and at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. At the age of twenty he was elected a fellow of Oriel--a distinction which was, and remained for two decades, almost the highest in the University--and he gained both Chancellor's Essay prizes, for Latin and English. Oriel was not in his time, as it was very shortly afterwards, a centre of ecclesiastical orthodoxy; but rather the home of a curious transition blend of thought which in different persons took the high-and-dry or the Rationalist direction, and was only generally opposed to Evangelicalism. Arnold himself inclined to the Liberal side, and had also strong personal gifts for teaching. He took orders, but neither became a tutor nor took a living, and established himself at Laleham, on the Thames, to take private pupils. After ten years' practice here he was elected to the Head-mastership of Rugby, a school then, after vicissitudes, holding little if anything more than a medium place among those English Grammar Schools which ranked below the great schools of Eton, Harrow, Westminster, Winchester, and Charterhouse. How he succeeded in placing