In 1832 Arnold had purchased a small estate, Fox How, between Rydal and
Ambleside, among the English lakes. "It is," he said, "with a mixed
feeling of solemnity and tenderness that I regard our mountain nest,
whose surpassing sweetness, I think I may safely say, adds a positive
happiness to every one of my waking hours passed in it." He loved every
tree, every rock, every flower, "as a child loves them." The three roads
he often used to walk upon with his children he called "Old Corruption,"
an irregular, grassy path; "Bit-by-Bit Reform;" and "Radical Reform," a
straight, good road.
The mountains were an especial delight. The impression they gave him, he
said, "was never one of bleakness or wildness, but of a sort of paternal
shelter and protection to the valley."
Here the work went on as elsewhere. "All the morning, till one o'clock,"
he wrote, "I used to sit in one corner of the drawing-room, not looking
towards Fairfield lest I should be constantly tempted from my work, and
there I worked on at the 'Roman History' and the 'Tudor Tables,' and
Appius Claudius and Cincinnatus, and all the rest of them."
The "Roman History" was never finished. The third volume, published
after his death, Archdeacon Hare thinks the first history which "has
given anything like an adequate representation of the wonderful genius
and noble character of Hannibal."
Dr. Arnold took an active part in the opposition to "The Tracts for the
Times," when John Henry Newman went from the High Church Party of Oxford
to the Roman Catholic Church, and became a cardinal. "I groan," he said,
"over the divisions of the church, of all our evils I think the greatest
... that men should call themselves Roman Catholics, Church of England
men, Baptists, Quakers, all sorts of appellations, forgetting that only
glorious name of CHRISTIAN, which is common to all, and a true bond of
union."
In 1835 Arnold accepted a fellowship in the Senate of the new London
University, with the hope that he could make it as he said, "Christian,
yet not sectarian." He wished an examination in the Scriptures to be a
part of the University work, but as the University from its charter was
intended for all denominations, without regard to belief, he was
overruled, and resigned his position. While he thanked Parliament "for
having done away with distinctions between Christian and
Christian"--Dissenters had been excluded heretofore from degrees at the
universities because not belonging to the Established Church--"I would
pray," he said, "that distinctions be kept up between Christians and
non-Christians."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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