"It is not necessary," he said, "that this should be a school of three hundred, or one hundred, or of fifty boys; but it is necessary that it should be a school of Christian gentlemen." All good hearts in time were bound to the firm, manly, sympathetic master, whose devotion to duty was contagious, and whose unceasing interest in his scholars was repaid by their reverence for him. Dr. Arnold's writings are earnest, clear, and independent. The six volumes of sermons, chiefly delivered to the Rugby boys, should be read by all boys, all parents, and all masters. Dean Stanley, his pupil and biographer, collected and republished his tracts on social and political subjects; and in the striking picturesqueness of his "Roman History," in which he adopts the "ballad-theory" of the Prussian historian, Niebuhr, he forestalled a mode of animated illustration, and contrast of ancient and modern events, which is so popular in the hands of Macaulay and Grote. Nine years of such a life as Arnold's would be enough to confer perpetual dignity on a more important place than Laleham, which contains a population of not more than six or seven hundred souls, and is not honoured and spoilt by a "surrounding neighbourhood" of new wealth, refinement, and education. Not that the village is more rustic--in the depreciative sense--than a village inhabited by people who "have known some nurture" ought to be. There are a few good old-fashioned houses about it, Arnold's being one of them; a solid red-brick house with a large garden. The occupant came to regard the country as "very beautiful." He had always a resource at hand, he tells us, in the bank of the river up to Staines; "which, though it be perfectly flat, has yet a great charm from its entire loneliness, there being not a house anywhere near it; and the river here has none of that stir of boats and barges upon it, which makes it in many places as public as the high road." Laleham House, the seat of the Earl of Lucan, is a plain square modern mansion with a Tuscan portico. The grounds of forty acres are noted for the noble elms, shrubs, lawns, and flower-gardens. "One spot for flowers, the rest all turf and trees," as Leigh Hunt sang, though not of so large and fine a domain. [Illustration: LALEHAM CHURCH.] [Illustration: CHERTSEY BRIDGE.]