Walter. In his diary he records that he "did not know whether to be pleased or not. On the whole, perhaps, I have no cause to complain as the first and second [classes] are both small, and I have beaten some men thought better than myself, and have been beaten by no one thought worse."
At any rate he was placed in a company not less distinguished in after achievement than is to be found in the first class of the same honours list.
After going down from the university he spent some little time in London, where his mother had now removed from the West Indies. Delane, who about this time was established in the editorial chair of the Times, was in constant association with him, and it was at this early period of his career that Dasent began to write articles for the paper which he afterwards served so faithfully and so well in an official capacity.
Sterling, who had returned from St. Vincent some years before, introduced him to his father, and Dasent became a frequent visitor at the white house in South Place, Knightsbridge. Here he became acquainted with Carlyle, whose works he had long admired, and whose rugged honesty of purpose and independent character proved an immediate attraction to his opening mind; with John Stuart Mill, with Julius Hare, and with Thackeray, the latter then only known to fame from the publication of the Yellow-Plush Papers.
The elder Sterling, in the evening of his days, after he had practically ceased to launch his thunderbolts in the press, loved to gather men of intellect, both young and old, round his dinner-table. Carlyle, in his Life of John
