In these years of all-round training Cambridge was doing for Charles Dilke what it has done for hundreds of other young men. The exceptional in his case sprang from the tie which linked this young athlete to the old scholar who, in his library at Sloane Street, or among his flowers at Alice Holt, was ceaselessly preoccupied with detail of the undergraduate's life and work. From the first there was a pathos in his eagerness to follow and understand all the minutiae of an unfamiliar scene. At the close of Charles Dilke's first term he wrote (December 1st, 1862): "Your letter gave me great pleasure, as indeed for one reason or another, or for no reason if you please, your letters always do; though not being a Cambridge man, I am at times a little puzzled.... What a bore I shall be after the 13th with my endless enquiries." Ten days later he is jubilant over the results of the college examination which closed the first term: "Hurrah! hurrah! my dear grandson. Ninety-seven out of a hundred-- eleven above the second 'man'--is a position that would satisfy a whole family of loving friends, even if they were all grandfathers." After every college examination the grandson sent lists of results, compiled with elaborate detail. The grandfather studied them, treasured them, compared them, wanted to know why this man had fallen back, how the other had advanced, and always with the same warm outflow of sympathy and pride over his own pupil. There they lie to-day in the despatch-boxes, preserved as a memorial of that love by the man on whom it was expended. On one is noted: "Many scraps such as this, and his letters, show the loving care with which my grandfather watched over my progress at the University." The beginning of his first Long Vacation he spent in travelling through Germany, Holland, and Belgium with his father. Later, in August, he visited Jersey and Guernsey, and went to France alone, making pilgrimage from Cherbourg to Tocqueville's two houses, and filling notebooks with observations on Norman architecture at St. Lô, Coutances, and elsewhere. He was perfecting his mastery of the language, too, and notes long after: "On this journey I was once taken for a Frenchman, but my French was not so good as it was about 1870." But always and everywhere he observed; and sent back the results of his observation to the man who had trained it. On June 30th, 1863, he writes: "I have been all over Brussels to-day. My previous estimate of the place is confirmed. It apes Paris without having any of the Parisian charms, just as its people speak French without being able to pronounce it. "The two modern pictures in the Palais de Justice are to me worth all the so-called Rubenses in the place. They are by Gallait and de Biefve, and the one is our old friend of last year in London, 'The Abdication of Charles V.'