Alexander Goodman Afore. [1342 



CHAPTER II. 



RUGBY AND BEMBRIDGE. 



[1842-1849.] 



SUMMER and Christmas holidays in the Isle of Wight, and 

 the rest of his time at Clifton, went by happily and 

 uneventfully, until, in December, 1843, he left Mr. Bailey's 

 school, to go, in the following February, to Rugby. He 

 was a Rugby boy for nearly six years, under the head- 

 mastership of Dr. Tait, afterwards Primate. He took to 

 public school-life with gusto, for, though always delicate, 

 he was a keen athlete as well as a quick scholar. Fre- 

 quently ill, and more than once obliged to go home from 

 this cause, he nevertheless made, on the whole, quick 

 progress, starting in the Lower Fifth in February, 1844, and 

 rising by five steps in eight half years to the Sixth Form, to 

 which he was promoted at Christmas, 1847. Next year he 

 became head of his house (Rev. Robt. B. Mayor's) ; and in 

 1849, while from ill-health "excused the June examina- 

 tions," was winner of various prizes, including the second 

 prize for Greek Iambics ; he also gained the Lower Bench 

 prize for Composition in Latin, Greek, and English. Mr. J. 

 G. Goschen, whose school career was an exceptionally 

 brilliant one, was More's contemporary in the Middle 

 Fifth, upper division (June-Dec. 1845), i n tne Fifth Form 

 (Jan. -June 1846), and again in the Sixth (1847-9) f r f ur 

 half-years, at the conclusion of which Goschen was first, 

 and More tenth, on the school list. 



During these years his taste for Natural History, of which 

 he was himself at first only half conscious, was steadily 

 developing. A gift of the ist series of Waterton's Essays 

 was made him in 1844. But it was not until two years 

 later, when his family removed for a time from the Isle of 

 Wight to Dagenham Vicarage, in Essex, that, according 

 to his journal, " Taste for birds began from being curious 



