and the King speaking. He walked arm-in-arm with the Queen, who
looked well and very much pleased. The Duke walked with that Grand
Duchess whose name you may see in the papers, for I can't spell it.'

Very characteristic this both of Eton's enthusiasm for the hero, and
of the hero's undemonstrative way of receiving it, which must have
somewhat surprised his foreign companions.

A week or two later, in November 1844, came the competition for the
Balliol scholarship, but Coley was not successful. On the Saturday
he writes:--

'The scholarship was decided last night; Smith, a Rugby man, got the
first, and Grant, a Harrow man, the second.... I saw the Master
afterwards; he said, "I cannot congratulate you on success, Mr.
Patteson, but you have done yourself great credit, and passed a very
respectable examination. I shall be happy to allow you to enter
without a future examination, as we are all quite satisfied of your
competency." He said that I had better come up to matriculate next
term, but should not have another examination. We were in about nine
hours a day, three hours in the evening; I thought the papers very
hard; we had no Latin elegiacs or lyrics, which was rather a bore for
the Eton lot. I am very glad I have been up now, but I confess it
was the longest week I ever recollect. I feel quite seedy after a
whole week without exercise.... The very first paper, the Latin Essay
(for which we were in six hours), was the worst of all my papers, and
must have given the examiners an unfavourable impression to start
with. The rest of my papers, with the exception of the Greek prose
and the critical paper, I did very fairly, I think.'