however much they may do in science or literature." And this was unfortunate, because "a thorough English gentleman—Christian, manly, and enlightened—is more, I believe, than Guizot or Sismondi could comprehend; it is a finer specimen of human nature than any other country, I believe, could furnish." Nevertheless, our travellers would imitate foreign customs without discrimination, "as in the absurd habit of not eating fish with a knife, borrowed from the French, who do it because they have no knives fit for use." Places, no less than people, aroused similar reflections. By Pompeii, Dr. Arnold was not particularly impressed. "There is only," he observed, "the same sort of interest with which one would see the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah, but indeed there is less. One is not authorised to ascribe so solemn a character to the destruction of Pompeii." The lake of Como moved him more profoundly. As he gazed upon the overwhelming beauty around him, he thought of "moral evil," and was appalled by the contrast. "May the sense of moral evil," he prayed, "be as strong in me as my delight in external beauty, for in a deep sense of moral evil, more perhaps than in anything else, abides a saving knowledge of God!"
His prayer was answered: Dr. Arnold was never in any danger of losing his sense of moral evil. If the landscapes of Italy only served to remind him of it, how could he forget it among the boys at Rugby School? The daily sight of so many young creatures in the hands of the Evil One filled him with agitated grief. "When the spring and activity of youth," he wrote, "is altogether unsanctified by anything pure and elevated in its desires, it becomes a spectacle that is as dizzying and almost more morally distressing than the shouts and gambols of a set of lunatics." One thing struck him as particularly strange: "it is very startling," he said, "to see so much of sin combined with so little of sorrow." The naughtiest
