grounds for concern. This old guard obstructed his appointment to a college lectureship, which would have increased his income beyond the basic Fellow's stipend of £300 a year. However, a group of more sympathetic dons, under John Robert Seeley, raised a subscription which funded an unofficial lectureship in history and enhanced Browning's earnings by around £150 a year. Browning believed that the function of the History school in King's was to educate future statesmen. He began a history course on Treaties, and was able to augment his income with fees from students attracted to the course. Browning's tutorials, held in his book-lined and lavishly decorated rooms, soon became famous; in the memory of one participant, "his talk was like a flow of molten lava that bore every kind of reminiscence on its tide". Within months of his arrival he had founded the Political Society, where students presented papers for discussion and criticism, thereby anticipating the role of the seminar as a feature of English university education. He began other societies, in particular a group devoted to the music of Mozart which developed into a Musical Society to which leading contemporary performers were invited. He also instituted a regular series of "at homes" in his rooms, at which his students would be able to meet and converse with Browning's distinguished friends and acquaintances, who might include George Eliot, Walter Pater, or John Ruskin. These occasions provided a stimulating adjunct to the learning process which, Mark McBeth observes, "did not have to be unglamorous, mind-numbing, nor rigid; it could be entertaining as well as informative, and intellectually stimulating". Using the 1874 Report of the Royal Commission on Oxford and Cambridge as a lever, Browning proposed a raft of reforms as to how King's should reorganise itself. He argued that the college should place the needs of its students at its centre, and should provide the resources to support a student "in any line of study that he might adopt", amid "companions most congenial to an industrious and able man". He compared King's unfavourably with its sister-college Trinity, and also suggested, undiplomatically, that the King's College provost should be paid less and his living accommodation made smaller. Though largely ignored at the time, many of Browning's ideas would be adopted in future years. Building a reputation In 1879 Browning became secretary of the Cambridge branch of the Oxbridge Teachers' Training Syndicate (TTS), formed