Ye bigot spires, ye Tory towers,
That crown the watery lea,
Where grateful science still adores
The aristocracy.

His genuine feeling is given in the lines on 'My old School':--

And if sometimes I've laughed in my rhymes at Eton,
Whose glory I never could jeopardise,
Yet I'd never a joy that I could not sweeten,
Or a sorrow I could not exorcise,

By the thought of my school and the brood that's bred there,
Her bright boy faces and keen young life;
And the manly stress of the hours that sped there,
And the stirring pulse of her daily strife.

To the last he cherished the memory of the school, and carefully
maintained his connection with it. One odd incident occurred in 1875,
when James got up a 'constitutional opposition' to the intrusion of the
revivalist preachers Moody and Sankey. His father wrote him a judicial
letter of advice, approving his action so long as it was kept within due
limits. He takes occasion to draw the moral that the whole power of such
people depends upon the badness of their hearers' consciences. A man who
has nothing to hide, who is 'just, benevolent, temperate and brave,' can
'look at things coolly and rate such people at their value.' Those 'few
words' (i.e. the names of the virtues) 'are the summary of all that is
worth having in life. Never forget any one of them for one moment,
though you need not talk about them any more than you talk about your
watch.' James had a marked influence in the college; he was a leading
orator in the school debating societies; and his good sayings were as
familiarly quoted as those of Sydney Smith or Luttrell in the larger
world. Mr. Cornish, who was his tutor for a time, tells me of the charm
of James's talk with his elders, and says that, although he was careless
on some matters upon which schoolmasters set a high value, he always
showed power and originality. He won an English Essay prize in 1875, the
History prize in 1876 and 1877, the Declamation prize in 1878, and was
one of the 'select' for the Newcastle in 1877.

James went to King's with a scholarship in 1878. He gave up classics and
took to history. He took a first class (bracketed first in the class) in
the historical tripos, but was only in the second class in the law
tripos. Besides prizes for college essays, he won the 'Member's Prize'
for an essay upon Bolingbroke in 1880, and the Whewell Scholarship for
International Law in 1881. He succee