In 1841 he was appointed by Lord Melbourne, Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, the chair being made vacant by the death of Dr. Nares. This gave him great pleasure, and with enthusiasm he began to prepare his lectures. He gave his first lecture Dec. 2, 1841, in the "theatre," the usual lecture-rooms in the Clarendon Buildings being too small for the hundreds who crowded to hear him. "It was an audience," says Dean Stanley, "unprecedented in the range of academical memory." He designed to give a yearly course of eight lectures, beginning with the fourteenth century. Some of his lectures were to be biographical: "The life and times of Pope Gregory, or the Great," Charlemagne, Alfred, Dante, and "the noblest and holiest of monarchs, Louis IX." He wrote Coleridge before going to Oxford, "If I do go up, many things, I can assure you, have been in my thoughts, which I wished gradually to call men's attention to; one in particular, which seems to me a great scandal--the debts contracted by the young men, and their backwardness in paying them. I think that no part of this evil is to be ascribed to the tradesmen, because so completely are the tradesmen at the mercy of the undergraduates, that no man dares refuse to give credit; if he did, his shop would be abandoned." Arnold still continued his work at Rugby, remaining in part because two of his sons were being educated there. He was also making final arrangements for an edition of St. Paul's Epistles. The last lecture of his first year at Oxford, June 2, 1842, was abandoned for the time, on account of a brief, but sudden illness. June 5 he preached his farewell sermon to the Rugby boys, before the vacation; and Friday, June 10, was the public-day for school speeches. Saturday he was in high spirits, taking his usual walk and bath, and conversing with his guests on social and historical topics. In the evening he gave a supper to some of the higher classes of the school. He wrote in his diary that evening, June 11, 1842: "The day after to-morrow is my birthday, if I am permitted to live to see it--my forty-seventh birthday since my birth. How large a portion of my life on earth is already passed.... But above all, let me mind my own personal work--to keep myself pure and zealous and believing--laboring to do God's will, yet not anxious that it should be done by me rather than by others, if God disapproves of my doing it." Between five and six o'clock on Sunday morning he awoke with a sharp pain across his chest. He lay with his hands clasped and his eyes raised upwards, while he repeated, "And Jesus said unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." Against Arnold's wish, his wife sent for a physician. Meantime she read to him in the Prayer Book, the fifty-first psalm. The twelfth verse, "O give me the comfort of thy help again, and establish me with thy free spirit," he repeated after her very earnestly.