With regard to more important matters, it must suffice to say that then, as always, his moral standard was the highest, and that no evil thing dared manifest itself in his presence. He had been trained, by an admirable mother, in the best traditions of the Tractarian school, and he was worthy of his training. Among his intimate friends were Dalmeny, afterwards Lord Rosebery; Henry Northcote, now Lord Northcote; Freddy Wood, afterwards Meynell; Alberic Bertie; and Francis Pelham, afterwards Lord Chichester. He left Eton in July, 1864, and his tutor, in a letter to a friend, thus commented on his departure: "There was nothing to comfort me in parting with Holland; and he was the picture of tenderness. He and others stayed a good while, talking in the ordinary easy way. M. L. came, and his shyness did not prevent my saying what I wished to say to him. But to Holland I could say nothing; and now that I am writing about it I cannot bear to think that he is lost." On leaving Eton, Holland went abroad to learn French, with an ultimate view to making his career in diplomacy. Truly the Canon of St. Paul's is an "inheritor of unfulfilled renown." What an Ambassador he would have made! There is something that warms the heart in the thought of His Excellency Sir Henry Scott Holland, G.C.B., writing despatches to Sir Edward Grey in the style of _The Commonwealth_, and negotiating with the Czar or the Sultan on the lines of the Christian Social Union. Returning from his French pilgrimage, he wept to a private tutor in Northamptonshire, who reported that "Holland was quite unique in charm and goodness, but would never be a scholar." In January, 1866, this charming but unscholarly youth went up to Balliol, and a new and momentous chapter in his life began.