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The Very Rev. GEORGE PEACOCK, D.D., Dean of Ely, was born 

 on the 9th of April, 1791, at Thornton Hall, Denton, in the parish 

 of Gainford near Darlington, in the county of Durham, and about 

 fourteen miles from Richmond in Yorkshire, being the residence of his 

 father, the Rev. Thomas Peacock, incumbent and during fifty years 

 perpetual curate of that parish, where he also kept a school. His 

 family consisted of five sons and three daughters, three of the sons 

 by a first marriage, and the other two, with the daughters, by a 

 second ; George being the youngest son of the five. In early youth 

 he showed no precocity of genius, but was a bold and active lad fond 

 of out-door sports, and, if remarkable for anything, rather for his 

 daring feats in climbing, which sometimes led him into very dan- 

 gerous situations, than for any special attachment to study. From 

 the nature of his father's occupation, it is not probable that he lacked 

 the usual elementary instructions ; but his early reading was desul- 

 tory, books of voyages and travels being most in favour with him ; 

 nor was it until, with a view to his future college career, he was sent 

 at nearly seventeen years of age (in January 1 808) to the school of the 

 Rev. Mr. Tate (formerly a Fellow of Sydney Sussex College, Cam- 

 bridge) at Richmond, that his great natural powers began to develope 

 themselves. Here, however, he applied himself with diligence to the 

 studies of the school, and with such success, that at the July exami- 

 nation he was placed alone, by a decided superiority, at the head of 

 his class, in which it may be noticed were two boys who afterwards 

 became Fellows, and four others who became Scholars of Trinity 

 College. He did not live in Mr. Tate's house, but in lodgings near 

 it, and had his evenings uninterrupted for study, which he used to 

 such purpose as to have read far in advance of the classical course 

 of the school, and to have obtained an accurate knowledge of the 

 niceties of Greek criticism, as well as a habit of sound rendering 

 both of the Greek and Latin classics. During one or more of the 

 vacations, particularly the summer one of 1809, he also read mathe- 

 matics with Mr., afterwards Dr. Brass, at that time a distinguished 

 Undergraduate of Trinity, from the town and school of Richmond, 

 and who subsequently took a Wrangler's degree. It would seem, 

 however, that up to the period of his entry at Trinity College in 

 October 1809, his mathematical reading had not extended much 

 beyond the first year's subjects then studied at Cambridge. We 



