vindictive, and Dilke suffered deprivation of the scholarship which he had
won at the close of his freshman year.

Such penalties carry no stigma with them. It should be noted, too, that at
a period of University history when casual excess in drink was no
reproach, but rather the contrary, Charles Dilke, living with boating men
in a college where people were not squeamish, drank no wine. Judge
Steavenson adds that the dislike of coarse talk which was marked with him
later was equally evident in undergraduate days.

Charles Dilke's own ambition and industry were reinforced by the keen
anxiety of his people. Concealing nothing of their eagerness for him to
win distinction, those who watched his career with such passionate
interest set their heart, it would seem, on purely academic successes. Sir
Wentworth Dilke may well have feared, from his own experience, that old
Mr. Dilke's expectations might again be disappointed by a student who
found University life too full of pleasure. At all events it was to his
father that the freshman wrote, October 24th, 1862, a fortnight after he
had matriculated:

"I am very sorry to see by your letter of this morning that you have
taken it into your head that I am not reading hard. I can assure you,
on the contrary, that I read harder than any freshman except Osborn,
who takes no exercise whatever; and that I have made the rowing-men
very dissatisfied by reading all day three days a week. On the other
three I never read less than six hours, besides four hours of lectures
and papers. I have not missed reading a single evening yet since I
have been here; that is, either from six, or seven, till eleven,
except Saturday at Latham's. This--except for a fourth-year man--is
more than even the tutors ask for.... I hope I have said enough to