THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT IN ENGLAND. 



267 



centre had, indeed, to receive aid from a still more 

 secluded and unacademic quarter. Undergraduates of 

 Cambridge used to migrate from the seat of teaching 

 which has been immortalised by Newton to the remote 

 Yorkshire village of Sedbergh, where John Dawson, 1 one 33. 

 of the few British analysts who held their own against son of 



Sedbergh. 



the great foreign authorities, taught the higher mathe- 

 matics for five shillings a-week. 



During the latter part of the eighteenth century a 

 formidable rival to the learning of Oxford and Cambridge 

 had sprung up in the Scotch universities. These were 34. 

 teaching centres, more after the manner of the foreign umver- 

 universities. They had been started on the model of the 

 University of Paris or of the older Italian universities ; 

 some had their origin in the educational movement which, 

 especially in those countries where the doctrines of Calvin 

 prevailed, accompanied the Reformation. 2 All through the 



ences ; in fact he makes a disparaging 

 remark regardingBritish as compared 

 with Continental mathematics. See 

 Peacock's ' Life of Dr Young,' p. 127. 

 1 John Dawson (1734-1820), the 

 eon of a poor " statesman " of Gars- 

 dale, tended his father's sheep till 

 he was twenty. He studied mathe- 

 matics with innate love and ability, 

 inventing a system of conic sec- 

 tions out of his own brain. By 

 teaching he gained a little money. 

 In 1756 he instructed three young 

 men of whom Adam Sedgwick's 

 father was one before they went 

 up for their Cambridge studies. He 

 then became assistant to a surgeon 

 at Lancaster. Having saved 100 

 he walked to Edinburgh and studied 

 medicine there. His funds spent, 

 he returned to Sedbergh, where he 

 practised as a surgeon. When he 

 had saved a larger sum he proceeded 



with this to London. After tak- 

 ing his degree in 1767, he settled 

 in his native county to practise his 

 profession and teach the higher 

 mathematics to Cambridge under- 

 graduates. They flocked to him 

 in the summer, and between 1781 

 and 1794 he numbered eight senior 

 wranglers among his pupils. In 

 1797 and subsequent years he 

 counted four more. In 1812 he 

 ceased teaching. He wrote papers 

 on the " precession " and the lunar 

 theory, and followed the develop- 

 ment of higher mathematics on the 

 Continent. See ' Life and letters 

 of Adam Sedgwick,' by J. W. 

 Clark and T. M'K. Hughes, 1890, 

 vol. i. p. 61, &c. 



2 Details referring to the founda- 

 tion of the Scotch universities are 

 given by Sir A. Grant in the first 

 volume of his ' Story of the Univer- 



