Untitled - Electric Scotland

n8 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP TAIT [en. v.
and the carriage was drawn down by the boys, and there
was the greatest possible excitement. One member of the
school-house, an Irishman, I found weeping so dreadfully
at the station that I brought him back, and got leave from
the new Head-master to let him stay with me for the
remaining week or two before he left school, to save him
the distress of beginning with a new Head-master. . . .
His tenure of the Head-mastership was a very remarkable
instance of goodness and good sense (and, I need hardly
add, very good abilities), enabling a man to fill a post for
which he was not specially designed. One may fairly say
this of so great a Bishop of London and Archbishop of
Canterbury. I try in vain to recollect any special failure
which I could point out. His interest in individual boys
was warm ; he never forgot them when they had left, and
the school-house received infinite kindness both from him
and from Mrs. Tait. I can only add that the impression
he made upon myself was such, that when I heard of his
being made Bishop of London I felt sure that he would
succeed or die."
The following is from the pen of Principal Shairp :-
"
Tait was certainly by no means a born school-master.
He had not himself been at an English public school, and
his sympathies and powers of influence lay more with
young men than with boys. . . . Besides this, the assistant
masters over whom he was to be placed had many of them
been devoted pupils and friends of Arnold, and they were
apt to fancy themselves exalted beyond other men by
their contact with him. It was not to be expected that
these men should have the same feelings towards Tait,
o
who was an entire stranger to them, which they had towards
Arnold. It may have been that some of them may have
been thought, both by their friends and by themselves,