I left Eton at Christmas, 1854, after nearly nine years’ experience of its good and its evil. The last half spent there was not a happy one, though I was high up (second, in fact) in sixth form, in the boats, a member of Pop, captain of my house, and invested therefore with dignities such as I could never hope to possess again. I had been for two years in Dr. Goodford’s division, and during all that time I cannot call to mind ever having received from him a friendly word, a kindly look or a smile: and when I left and deposited his fee[24] with him, he said, “Well! I hope you may do better elsewhere than you have done here. But I doubt it.” Not very gracious or encouraging words with which to send a boy forth into the battle of life. And yet I cannot have been altogether so bad as he thought, for my leave-taking with my tutor, and with other masters who knew me better than Goodford did, was very different. But apart from such personal matters, the memory of that last half is a sad one. We were at the beginning of the Crimean War, and never shall I forget the black gloom of the day when the list of killed and wounded at the battle of the Alma was posted up at Pote Williams’ bookshop. We older boys came out of the shop blinded with tears ill repressed for poor young fellows who had been in the same division with us a few months before, and others a year or two our seniors, who had been the demi-gods of our fourth-form days. Then came Inkerman—and how the blood raced boiling through our veins when we read the soul-stirring story of Balaclava—outdoing Thermopylæ. Just heaven! Why were we not there? Think of us boys, almost men, reading of the gallant deeds of Bob Lindsay, Gerald Goodlake, George Wombwell, and many others, men almost boys! Then came the trenches, but of those hours the worst was yet to come. From Eton I went to Batsford, which I saw for the first time, little thinking of the future which it held for me; and there I spent four happy weeks, being introduced to shooting and hunting, the latter under the tutelage of old Jem Hills, the famous huntsman of the Heythrop, of which Lord Redesdale, though no longer master, was still the uncrowned king.