PREFACE

WILLIAM CHARLES LAKE, the subject of these reminiscences, was the eldest son of Captain Charles Lake, an officer of the Scots Guards, who, after some years of service in the British army, fought and was severely wounded at Waterloo in the defence of Hougomont, soon after which he retired from the army and lived the life of a private gentleman. His mother was Anna Louisa Halsey, youngest daughter of Henry Halsey, Esq., of Henley Park, Surrey, who was married to Captain Lake in 1816, and by him had several children. William, her eldest child, was born in London on January 7, 1817, and was brought up at first in an old manor-house belonging to a family of the name of Hopton, at Kemerton, in Gloucestershire; but at the age of eight, after some wanderings in France and in the Channel Islands, became domiciled at Rugby, at which place his father had determined to live, on account of the advantages which he would thus enjoy for the education of his sons. Rugby School had not then acquired the high reputation which later on accrued to it, but it was known as a place where a good solid education was obtainable, and as one much patronized by the gentry and a portion of the nobility of the Midlands. The Headmaster at the time, Dr. Wooll, was not a man of great eminence as a scholar, nor was he distinguished even as a disciplinarian, but he was known to be an honest and steady worker, and to turn out boys who were gentlemen and who filled their several positions in life creditably.

Attending school as a day-boy and in one of the lower classes, William Lake did not come much under the Headmaster's influence, and cannot be said to have owed much to the earliest director of his studies. But within a short time-two years

only after his entering the school-the change occurred which gave to Rugby a new life, and elevated it almost at once to the foremost position among the public schools of the country. Dr. Arnold was elected to the Headmastership at the close of 1827, and the subject of our memoir had thus the good fortune to pass the greater portion of his school-days under the direction and influence of the greatest school-instructor of our ageperhaps the greatest that has ever yet discharged the office. Possessing remarkable abilities, he naturally attracted in an especial way the attention of his gifted teacher, one of whose favourite pupils he became while he was still a mere boy, and whose warm friendship and entire confidence he acquired and retained till the blow fell which deprived the school of its eminent head.

Much, however, as he owed to Rugby in this respect, perhaps he owed it still more for the advantage which he derived from the friendships which he there formed with several of his schoolfellows, especially with two of the most remarkable men of our time, Charles John Vaughan and Arthur Penrhyn Stanley. The three were nearly of an age, Lake being about a year younger than the others; and, coming together under the immediate teaching of Dr. Arnold in the Sixth Form in 1830, they acted and reacted upon each other in an extraordinary way, stimulating each other's abilities and helping to form each other's characters, to their great mutual benefit. Four years of such intercourse, interrupted only by the short holidays of those times, could not but have had an educational value which it is difficult to over-estimate, and, coming at the most susceptible period of human life, must have left indelible impressions. The three boys formed a sort of triumvirate during the period in question, governing the school under their revered head, consorting almost exclusively with each other, and giving the tone to the entire body politic-a tone, it is almost needless to say, at once moral, religious, and highly intellectual. On one occasion a contemplated rebellion, to which large numbers of the boys had committed themselves, was stopped and averted mainly by the conjoint efforts of the three friends, who 'pointed out the folly of resistance, and brought the turbulent majority to reason and submission' (Prothero's 'Life of Stanley,' vol. i., p. 69). It is not too much to say that the lofty ideal of public

school life first conceived by Arnold was fully shared in by the 'friends,' and that it was greatly by their aid that he was enabled to bring the entire school into that excellent moral and intellectual condition which caused it to be held up for many years, in and after Arnold's time, as a model to other similar institutions.

Lake was very happy at Rugby and very successful. The number of school prizes which he gained was extraordinary, and when, in 1834, he crowned the whole by carrying off the academic honour of a Balliol Scholarship-only once before gained by a Rugbeian-it was felt that, so far as this phase of his life was concerned, there was nothing more to be desired.

His Balliol success took him in 1835 to Oxford. There had been some doubt previously whether he should matriculate at Oxford or Cambridge. The transition from school to University life had broken up the triumvirate,' but, unfortunately, the two members of it who were the first to quit Rugby selected for themselves, or had selected for them by their friends, different Universities. Stanley went to Oxford, Vaughan to Cambridge. Thus Lake was left between two attractions, one almost as strong as the other. Vaughan was particularly anxious to obtain his companionship at Cambridge, and made great efforts to influence him in that direction. But the Balliol election turned the scale; it gave the young student a position that could not be lightly rejected; it placed him in the closest possible relations with Stanley, who held a Balliol Scholarship already, and it was generally satisfactory to his friends and relatives.

Lake went up to reside in October, 1835. He found among his brother scholars, besides Stanley, the following, who all attained to more or less of eminence in after life: Edward Elder, John Wickens, Edward Cardwell (Lord Cardwell), Henry Holden, James Lonsdale, Benjamin Jowett, Edward Meyrick Goulburn, and Charles Francis Trower. At the same time the college contained among its undergraduate commoners Edward Arthur Litton, Edmund Hobhouse, Samuel Waldegrave, and Benjamin Collins Brodie. It is needless to say that with most of these Lake in a short time became familiar, and it can hardly be necessary to point out the great advantage which he enjoyed in thus coming into contact with so many, such remark