At twelve years of age he went to Foyle College close to Londonderry, to be under the care of the Reverend James Knox, his mother’s brother. In this College were his brothers George and Henry, also Robert Montgomery, who was in future years to become to him the best of colleagues. Here he stayed during two years of great importance in the forming of his mind and disposition, as he breathed the air, imbibed the ideas, and gathered the associations of Ulster. At first, however, his ways were so much those of England that his companions called him “English John.” The education which he there received was characteristic of the British type, for it tended rather to form and strengthen the character than to enlighten the intellect. The religious training, to which he was subjected, appears to have been somewhat too severely strict. Yet in combination with home influences and with natural impulses, it planted religion ineradicably deep in his heart. The recollection of it, however, rendered him adverse to formalism of any kind. Foyle College as an educational institution has doubtless been much developed since his time. But the building and its precincts may now be seen almost exactly as they were when he was there. From the upper windows is the same prospect which he had of the Foyle estuary, and from the field where he played football is beheld a view of the historic city. As he used to stay there with his uncle during the holidays, he must have often walked round the terrace on the top of the well-kept walls, that still enclose the old citadel-town wherein the faith and freedom of the Protestants were sheltered during the storm of war in 1688-9. Here he found the historic memories preserved with wonderful tenacity. So he must have gazed at the Ship-Quay, the Water-gate as it once was, whither the relieving ships from England, after fighting their way up the Foyle, brought victuals for the long-suffering and famished garrison. He must have passed beneath the venerable bastions where the defenders repeatedly beat back the French soldiers of King James. He attended on Sundays divine service in the Cathedral which stood close to the fighting-ground during the defence, and where the bones of eminent defenders were interred. This, then, was just the place to be for him a _nutrix leonum_, and the meet nurse for a heroic child; as indeed it is the Saragossa of the British Isles. In after life his talk would oft revert to the Foyle as to him the queen of rivers. Forty years later, when at the summit of his greatness, he spoke publicly to his admirers in the Punjab about the memories of Londonderry, as nerving Britons in other lands to stubborn resistance.