obliged later to revert to Mathematics. This advice, however, I did not accept, and two years later did sufficiently well in French, German, Hindustani, and other subjects, to gain three places on passing out, on the position I held in the Entrance Examination. Many of my companions of the College were no longer young, and some found it difficult to alter their habits to the College life. A clever Artillery officer was much vexed because after the first week, during which his messmates consented to play whist with him after dinner as an act of politeness refused to do so any longer; thus he was left without amusement in the evening, being unwilling to follow the custom of most of the officers, who studied till bedtime. For a week or ten days I played chess with him, at the end of which time he returned to Regimental duty, although there was no doubt he could have passed well, had he been willing to alter his mode of life. I soon made the acquaintance of the Reverend Charles Kingsley, whose Rectory, Eversley, was about 6 miles from the College, and spent many happy Sundays in the family circle. Thousands of his readers may have often pictured in their minds what kind of man wrote _Westward Ho_, but few can have realised his delightful simplicity and charm of manner, which made him a most eloquent preacher in spite of an occasional stammer. This did not affect him in the pulpit, where his great command of language enabled him to bridge over a word he found difficult, by substituting a synonym, and I never heard more perfect word-pictures than those he preached of David’s life on four successive Sundays in 1864. He loved not only his fellow-men but all Nature, and his children “learnt without tears” the names of every tree, plant, wildflower, and weed. I asked him once if he would not shorten the service by omitting the Litany when he read the Communion service, and he replied he had started by doing so, but the labourers, possibly feeling they were being defrauded, complained, saying, “Unless we get the whole, we shan’t come.” Throughout the two years’ course I hunted as a rule five days a fortnight. For the first year I went home every Saturday night, thus giving the Professors the impression that I was not studying; but I was never in bed after six on a hunting morning, and always did three hours’ study on my return, and so lost less time than my instructors imagined.