After taking his B.A., he went instead to spend a post-graduate year at Belfast, and read for a Master's degree—this in spite of the fact that he was worn out with the strain of eighteen hours' work a day, and used to see authors creeping in through the keyhole and wake in the night to find illuminated letters dancing a witches' dance around his bed.
Then, just at the critical moment of his life—in the spring of 1854—the British Foreign Office gave a nomination for the Consular Service in China to each of the three Irish Queen's Colleges, Belfast, Cork and Galway. He immediately abandoned all idea of reading for a fellowship, and applied. So did thirty-six others. A competitive examination was announced, but when the College authorities saw Hart's name among the rest, they gave the nomination to him, without examination.
Two months later he presented himself at the Foreign Office in London and saw the Under-Secretary of State, Mr. (afterwards Lord) Hammond, who gave him some parting advice. "When you reach Hongkong," said he, "never venture into the sun without an umbrella, and never go snipe shooting without top boots pulled up well over the thighs." As no snipe have ever been seen on Hongkong, the last bit of counsel was as absurd as the first was sensible.
He actually started for China in May 1854. It is not easy to imagine in these feverish days of travel what that journey must have meant to a young Irish lad brought up in a small town lad to whom even London probably seemed very far away. But the mothers of other sons can give a pretty shrewd guess at how the mere thought of it must have terrified those he was leaving behind. "Will he come back a heathen?" one might ask, and another—but never aloud—"Will he come at all?"
But, whatever they felt, none would have selfishly held him back; on the contrary, they were all encouragement, and the last thing his father did was to put into the young man's hand a roll of fifty sovereigns—a splendid piece of generosity on the part of one whose whole income at the time did not amount to more than a few hundreds a year—and later, splendidly repaid.
It is interesting to review the curious series of incidents that guided Robert Hart towards the great and romantic career before him. Had it not been for the tutor's detention, the subsequent move from Taunton to Dublin, and the sudden awakening there of his mischievous ambition over Scripture History, he would probably never have developed into the ardent student he did at a very early age, or left school so young.
Again, had it not been for his extreme youth, his family would probably have sent him to Dublin instead of to Belfast—and Dublin received no nomination for the Consular Service in China. Such nominations were not usually given to Colleges, and the only reason that the three colleges comprising the Queen's University in Ireland received them was because the University was new, and the Foreign Office (at which, by the way, the Chief, Lord Clarendon, was also Chancellor of the Queen's University) desired to give it some recognition and encouragement.
Surely if ever a boy was "led," as the Wesleyans say, to do a certain work, Robert Hart was that boy.