He pursued his various studies--literature, languages, music--with energy.
He was diligent--during a brief attendance--in Professor Long's Greek class at University College--"a bright, handsome youth," as a classfellow has described him, "with long black hair falling over his shoulders." He sang, he danced, he rode, he boxed, he fenced.

But below all these activities a restless inward current ran.

For a time he became, as Mrs Orr has put it, "a professing atheist and a practising vegetarian;" and together with the growing-pains of intellectual independence there was present a certain aggressive egoism.

He loved his home, yet he chafed against some of its social limitations.

Of friendships outside his home we read of that with Alfred Domett, the 'Waring' of his poems, afterwards the poet and the statesman of New Zealand; with Joseph Arnould, afterwards the Indian judge; and with his cousin James Silverthorne, the 'Charles' of Browning's pathetic poem _May and Death_.