'After our visit to Paris in 1855 my brother and I had taken to speaking and to writing to one another in French, and this practice we kept up until his death, even when he was Member of Parliament for Newcastle-on-Tyne, and I a member of the Government.' One memory of that year never left Sir Charles Dilke. In the evenings he used to go to the Place Vendôme to hear the Guards' combined tattoo. Every regiment was represented, and the drummers were a wonderful show in their different brilliant uniforms--Chasseurs of the Garde, Dragoons, Lancers, Voltigeurs, and many more. In the midst was the gigantic sergeant-major waiting, with baton uplifted, for the clock to strike. At the first stroke he gave the signal with a twirl and a drop of his baton, and the long thundering roll began, taken up all round the great square. Sir Charles, as he told of this, would repeat the tambour-major's gesture; and the boy's tense, eager look of waiting, and flash of satisfaction when the roll broke out, revived on the countenance of the man. 'In 1856 I became half attached to a day-school, which had for its masters, in mathematics a Mr. Acland, a Cambridge man, and in classics a Mr. Holme, a fellow of Durham, and for several years I used to do the work which they set in the school without regularly attending the school, which, however, my brother attended. My health at that time was not supposed to be sufficiently strong to enable me even to attend a day-school, and still less to go to a public school; but there was nothing the matter with me except a nervous turn of mind, overexcitable and overstrained by the slightest circumstance. This lasted until I was eighteen, when it suddenly disappeared, and left me strong and well; but the form which this weakness took may be illustrated by the fact that, although I did not believe in ghosts, I have known myself at the age of sixteen walk many miles round to avoid passing through a "haunted" meadow.' Also he made the experiments in literature common with clever lads: 'In 1856 I wrote a novel called _Friston Place_, and I have a sketch which I made of Friston Place in Sussex in August of that year, but the novel I have destroyed, as it was worthless.' Another aspect of his education is recalled by drawings preserved in the boxes from 1854 onwards--conscientious delineations of buildings visited, representing an excellent training for the eye and observation. In 1857 his grandfather took him to Oxford (where he rambled happily about the meadows while Mr. Dilke read in the Bodleian) and to Cambridge, going on thence to Ely, Peterborough, and Norwich. Later in the same year the pair travelled all over South Wales, everywhere rehearsing the historical memories of the place, everywhere mastering the details of whatever architecture presented itself.