"My highest ambition, and what I hope to do as far as I can, is to make my history the very reverse of Gibbon in this respect,—that whereas the whole spirit of his work, from its low morality, is hostile to religion, without speaking directly against it, so my greatest desire would be, in my History, by its high morals and its general tone, to be of use to the cause, without actually bringing it forward."
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Statement (1826) on his History of Rome, quoted in A. P. Stanley, The Life and Correspondence and Thomas Arnold (1910), p. 192
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Thomas Arnold
Thomas Arnold (13 June 1795 – 12 June 1842) was a schoolmaster and historian, head of Rugby School from 1828 to 1841. His son was the poet Matthew Arnold; he was also an ancestor of Aldous Huxley.
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