 After education at Moffat Academy and Heidelberg University, he entered Lincoln's Inn as a student on 2 November 1857, and on 30 April 1861 was called to the bar.But he then gave up the law for a career as a journalist.Rae edited for a time about 1860 "The Reader", and early joined the staff of the "Daily News", sympathetic to its liberal politics, as a special correspondent in Canada and the United States.