Already, before I had made my change of view known to my father, I had resolved to matriculate at the London University in preparation to becoming a student for the Bar, and, when the break came, I at once joined the classes at University College and assisted myself further by private tuition in several branches of knowledge which I had to take up for examination. Some Greek I had to learn, for I had none, a little chemistry, and then there was my Latin, not at any time considerable, to be furbished up. None of these things could I have done without the liberal help of my father, for I had no resources of my own. But this liberal help was never lacking, and I think, when his first disappointment had passed, he became interested in furthering my new career. But the work had to be swiftly done, for I was impatient to be upon my way, and could not have been done in the time, in view of my meagre stock of scholastic knowledge, if it had not been for the zealous help of those who coached me. By their aid I was enabled to matriculate at the London University, and in the Honours Division, in February of the year 1870, just a month before my twenty-first birthday. In February 1871 I obtained the First Class in Honours in Jurisprudence and Roman Law, and in July 1871, having already been entered as a student of the Inner Temple, I secured the scholarship in Roman and International Law from the Council of Legal Education. Shortly afterwards, in the year 1872, I was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple, and with this event the period of my boyhood may be said to have closed. CHAPTER II IDLE HOURS It might perhaps be supposed, from the brief account I have given of myself, that these earlier days were wholly devoted to study and hard work. This, however, was very far from being the case. At school I had been an ardent cricketer and a lover of football, and in the holidays with my second brother, who was as keenly devoted to fishing as I was, I passed many a happy hour among the hills of Cumberland and in the Scottish Highlands. It was in Cumberland that we were first initiated into the mysteries of the craft by a genial drunkard named Atkinson, who dwelt in a small cottage close by Wordsworth’s grave in Grasmere churchyard. My father had been a native of the hills, and his forebears came of that race of Dalesmen, or small free-holders, owning farms of a hundred acres or more, whose independence of character Wordsworth so strongly extols, but whose little properties have been long since absorbed in the great estates of the Lake District. My grandfather’s farm was situated at Jonby, midway between Penrith and the shores of Ullswater, and it was natural, when my father’s resources sufficed, that our summer outing should be made in the land of his birth.