‘I do not believe that I was guilty of the rashness of throwing the javelin over the Cam. It was, I think, a passage of arms got up by the Eton men of the two Unions. My share, if any, was only as a member of the august committee of the green baize table. I can, however, remember the irruption of the three Cambridge orators. We Oxford men were precise, orderly, and morbidly afraid of excess in word or manner. The Cambridge oratory came in like a flood into a mill-pond. Both Monckton Milnes and Henry [Arthur] Hallam took us aback by the boldness and freedom of their manner. But I remember the effect of Sunderland’s declaration and action to this day. It had never been seen or heard before among us; we cowered like birds, and ran like sheep.... I acknowledge that we were utterly routed. Lord Houghton’s beautiful reviving of those old days has in it something fragrant and sweet, and brings back old faces and old friendships, very dear as life is drawing to its close.’ Mr Milnes had always wished that his son should become distinguished in that House of Commons where he had himself made so brilliant a _début_. With this object in view, he had urged him to cultivate speaking in public, and probably the only part of his Cambridge career which he viewed with complete satisfaction was his interest in, and success at, the Union Debating Society. But even in this they did not quite agree. Mr Milnes urged his son to take a decided line, and to lead the Union. But the only answer he could get was, ‘If there is one thing on which I have ever prided myself, it is on having no politics at all, and judging every measure by its individual merits. A leader there must be a violent politician and a party politician, or he must have a private party. I shall never be the one or have the other.’ Again, they were at variance on the burning question of the day, the Reform Bill. Mr Milnes, though a Conservative, was in favour of it; his son described it as ‘the curse and degradation of the nation.’ Further, while exhorting his son to prepare himself for public life, with a singleness of purpose that, if adhered to, would have excluded other and more congenial pursuits, Mr Milnes warned him that his circumstances would not allow him to enter parliament. No wonder, therefore, that the young man became perplexed and melancholy, and more than ever anxious to find a refuge for his aspirations in literature.