Untitled - Electric Scotland

u6 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP TAIT [CH. v.
then an undergraduate at Oxford), I remember being, on
the whole, content ; and I think I am right in saying that
the Rugby undergraduates, when we met in October-
though the loss of Arnold absorbed us to a degree difficult
to make others realise turned with great loyalty to Tait.
I was intimate with many who came up
Rugby in the year following his appointment,
to Oxford from
and the
impression I got of him was that of quite indefatigable
earnestness and industry, and of his throwing himself heart
and soul into the Rugby tradition. Indeed,
I am not
wrong, I suspect, in thinking that Tait and Cotton (though
both of course with an infinite fund of humour) probably
over-strained the amount of responsibility and high-strung
sense of duty which Arnold had made a part of the older
boys education. Some few boys flung off from it entirely,
but others came to Oxford in Tait s earlier days over
weighted. We older Rugbeians had perhaps been as bad ;
but we used to think that the younger generation carried
the flag of moral thoughtfulness rather too high. l
. . .
"Early in 1846 Dr. Tait appointed me an assistant
master at Rugby. I remember our interview to arrange
preliminaries. There was truth as well as humour in his
remark (to which I cordially assented) that we had other
things to do at Rugby besides exalting
the Arnold
tradition. The school was at that time somewhat out of
gear. The influx of boys had been immense ; the houses
were overcrowded ; the system of payment was inequit
able, enriching the older masters, but leaving no funds for
increase of staff. The Head-master s position must, I am
sure on looking back, have been surrounded with difficulties
and anxieties. He worked very hard : rose early and
worked before first school, which was at 7 o clock, especially
1 Arthur Stanley in one of his sermons at Oxford speaks of Arnold s boys
as having felt at school "the care of all the Churches." (Sermons
Apostolic Age, p. 28. )
on the