54                    Christ's College, Cambridge.

Fire and Water in the sixth volume of the " Transactions
of the Society of Biblical Archaeology." At this time
my friends could not agree about the work which I was
best qualified to do in life, and some wanted me to settle
down to copying cuneiform texts for publication, and
others wanted me to go to the East and help Mr. Rassam,
who was then about to start for Assyria to continue
excavations at Nineveh and other places. In May
Mr. Gladstone wrote to Mr. Seager, and said that he had
decided that I should go up to Cambridge in the following
October, and asked him to do all he could meanwhile to
help me to pursue the study of Semitic Languages as he
wished. This Mr. Seager did with characteristic thorough¬
ness, and I read with him until the Saturday before he
left London to assist at the Oriental Congress in Florence.
There he died at the Hotel de la Ville, September i8th.
Alas!

In October I went up to Cambridge, and entered as a
Non-Collegiate Student, and began to read for the
Semitic Languages Tripos, which had recently been
established. In the Lent Term of the following year
Dr. Peile, Fellow and Tutor of Christ's College, proposed
that I should migrate thither, saying that the Master
and Fellows were prepared to give me an Exhibition for
Assyrian if I did sufficiently well in the College Examina¬
tions in May. I accepted the proposal gratefully, and
was admitted a pensioner at Christ's under Messrs. Peile
and Cartmell, April 23rd, 1879. I^ ^^Y I ^^^ examined
in Hebrew and Assyrian, the examination papers in the
latter language being set by Professor A. H. Sayce, and
on June nth I was elected Otway Exhibitioner. The
following year the College prize for Hebrew fell to me,
and in June, 1881, I was elected a Scholar of the College.
Early in 1882 I took my degree in the Semitic Languages
Tripos, for which I was the only candidate, and in May
I was awarded a Tyrwhitt University Scholarship for
Hebrew. The College most generously offered to con¬
tinue my Scholarship for another year, and thus I was
enabled to stay up at Cambridge and read Arabic,
Ethiopic and Talmudic Literature.