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.

What was he like at this period of his life? A graphic letter just
received enables me to answer this question. "When I first met
him, I looked on him with the deepest interest, and realized the
charm that everyone felt. He had just gone up to Oxford, and was
intensely keen on Ruskin and Browning, and devoted to music. He
would listen with rapt attention when we played Chopin and Schumann
to him. I used to meet him at dinner-parties when I first came out,
by which time he was very enthusiastic on the Catholic side, and
very fond of St. Barnabas, Pimlico, and was also deeply moved by
social questions, East End poor, etc.; always unconventional, and
always passionately interested in whatever he talked of. Burne-Jones
once told me: 'It was perfectly delicious to see Holland come into a
room, laughing before he had even said a word, and always bubbling
over with life and joy.' Canon Mason said to me many years ago that
he had hoped I kept every scrap Scotty ever wrote to me, as he
was quite sure he was the most remarkable man of his generation.
But there was a grave background to all this merriment. I remember
that, as we wer