But George Strachan Never Passed From His
Memory, And Having Ultimately Run Him To Earth, Yule, Sixty Years Later,
Published The Results In An Interesting Article.[11]
Two or three years after his wife's death, Major Yule removed to
Edinburgh, and established himself in Regent's Terrace, on the face of the
Calton Hill.[12] This continued to be Yule's home until his father's
death, shortly before he went to India.
"Here he learned to love the wide
scenes of sea and land spread out around that hill - a love he never lost,
at home or far away. And long years after, with beautiful Sicilian hills
before him and a lovely sea, he writes words of fond recollection of the
bleak Fife hills, and the grey Firth of Forth."[13]
Yule now followed his elder brother, Robert, to the famous High School,
and in the summer holidays the two made expeditions to the West Highlands,
the Lakes of Cumberland, and elsewhere. Major Yule chose his boys to have
every reasonable indulgence and advantage, and when the British
Association, in 1834, held its first Edinburgh meeting, Henry received a
member's ticket. So, too, when the passing of the Reform Bill was
celebrated in the same year by a great banquet, at which Lord Grey and
other prominent politicians were present, Henry was sent to the dinner,
probably the youngest guest there.[14]
At this time the intention was that Henry should go to Cambridge (where
his name was, indeed, entered), and after taking his degree study for the
Bar. With this view he was, in 1833, sent to Waith, near Ripon, to be
coached by the Rev. H. P. Hamilton, author of a well-known treatise, On
Conic Sections, and afterwards Dean of Salisbury. At his tutor's
hospitable rectory Yule met many notabilities of the day. One of them was
Professor Sedgwick.
There was rumoured at this time the discovery of the first known (?)
fossil monkey, but its tail was missing. "Depend upon it, Daniel
O'Conell's got hold of it!" said 'Adam' briskly.[15] Yule was very happy
with Mr. Hamilton and his kind wife, but on his tutor's removal to
Cambridge other arrangements became necessary, and in 1835 he was
transferred to the care of the Rev. James Challis, rector of Papworth St.
Everard, a place which "had little to recommend it except a dulness which
made reading almost a necessity."[16] Mr. Challis had at this time two
other resident pupils, who both, in most diverse ways, attained
distinction in the Church. These were John Mason Neale, the future eminent
ecclesiologist and founder of the devoted Anglican Sisterhood of St.
Margaret, and Harvey Goodwin, long afterwards the studious and
large-minded Bishop of Carlisle. With the latter, Yule remained on terms of
cordial friendship to the end of his life. Looking back through more than
fifty years to these boyish days, Bishop Goodwin wrote that Yule then
"showed much more liking for Greek plays and for German than for
mathematics, though he had considerable geometrical ingenuity."[17] On one
occasion, having solved a problem that puzzled Goodwin, Yule thus
discriminated the attainments of the three pupils:
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