His taste for Victor Hugo led him to write in the _Athenaeum_ a long notice of _Les Travailleurs de la Mer_ in 1866, when that romance appeared; but another article about the same period on international law indicates the main bent of his studies. As early as the Long Vacation of 1864, in the course of preparing his essay on forms of government, he had found himself tracing 'the future of the Anglo-Saxon race both in the United States and Australasia'; and he thus, without knowing it, laid the foundation lines of _Greater Britain_. Also, in 1865, 'I had already dreamt of visiting and writing upon Russia, a country which always had a great hold on my imagination.' Another project of these undergraduate years was less his own than his grandfather's. Old Mr. Dilke contemplated a universal catalogue of books, to be prepared by international action. This scheme was completely abandoned, yet it is interesting that the grandson entertained it. The scholar, not merely the lover, but the active servant, of learning, was always present in Charles Dilke's many-sided personality, though never dominant. We approach the central preoccupations of his mind with the _History of Prevalent Opinions in Politics_, towards which 'a great deal of work' was done by him in the winter of 1864-65. In 1866 the same underlying group of ideas took form in the outline of a treatise on _Radicalism_. In working for this he read 'most of the writers upon the theory of politics--Hooker, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Linguet, Locke, Bentham, and many more.' 'Many more' included some very unusual reading; for the plan of his book was in three chapters, 'the first chapter being upon the Radicalism of the days before the coming of Jesus; the second chapter upon the period between the teaching of our Lord and 1789; and the third on Radicalism in modern history.' In the second part he 'gave much space to Arius, Huss, Wyclif, Savonarola, Vane, Roger Williams, Baxter, Fox, Zinzendorf, and other religious reformers.' All this reading taught him the 'extent to which forgotten doctrines come up again, and are known by the names of men who have but revived them'; and, on the other hand, how doctrines change and degenerate while keeping the original name. 'In the sketch of my book, so far as it was worked out, I gave much space to the falling-off in the Church from the Radicalism of primitive Christianity.... It began with a definition of Radicalism as a going to the root of things, which naturally led to the doctrine of the perfectibility of man, and, quoting the gospels freely, I attempted to prove the essential Radicalism of Christ's teaching.' Here, then, is suggested another aspect of his mind's history. He notes: