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this period of his life (about 1875-77), he also caught the enthusiasm inspired by the eloquence of the late Ananda Mohan Bose and Mr. Surendranath Banerjea and felt the impulses of a higher patriotic life.
From 1879 to 1882, he was a student of the Metropolitan Institution. He has often said that the one fascination he had for joining Vidyasagar's College was that he should be able to sit at the feet of Mr. Surendranath Banerjea. Indeed, the exposition of Morley's Burke and Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution from the lips of the great Bengalee orator made a life-long impression on Dr. Ray. All this time young Ray was also a student of the Presidency College (in the scientific department) where he attended the lectures of Sir John Eliot in physics and of Sir Alexander Pedler in chemistry. Dr. Ray's father, having lost in the meantime a considerable portion of his ancestral fortunes, was precluded from giving his brilliant son the benefit of an education in England. Young Ray, however, slowly and quietly prepared himself for the Gilchrist Scholarship Examination, and it is singular that his father and other relations were kept entirely in the dark about his intentions, his eldest brother alone having been taken into his confidence. In 1882, Ray proceeded to England as a Gilchrist Scholar and studied at Edinburgh for six years. Although his taste and inclination lay towards English literature and history, he realised that the future progress of India was bound up with the pursuit of science, and thus he gradually allowed himself to be weaned away from his former studies. At Edinburgh, he was the pupil of the celebrated Peter Guthrie Tait and of Alexander Crum Brown -- two mighty intellects in the departments of physical science and chemistry -- and through their teachings he shortly
