burgh during the winters 1820-22 he went to a day-school ; and after 

 that, living at home at Jordanhill, he attended the Grammar School of 

 Glasgow for three years. As a boy he was extremely active, and fond of 

 every thing that demanded skill, strength, and daring. At Roseneath he 

 was constantly in boats ; and his favourite reading was any thing about 

 the sea, commencing no doubt with details of adventurers and bucca- 

 neers, but going on to narratives of voyages of discovery, and to the best 

 text-books of seamanship and navigation as he grew older. He had of 

 course the ordinary ardent desire to become a sailor, incidental to boys 

 of this island; but with him the passion remained through life, and 

 largely influenced the scientific work by which he has conferred never-to- 

 be-forgotten benefits on the marine service of the world, and made con- 

 tributions to nautical science which have earned credit for England 

 among maritime nations. He was early initiated into practical seaman- 

 ship under his father's instruction, in yacht-sailing. He became an 

 expert and bold pilot, exploring and marking passages and anchorages 

 for himself among the intricate channels and rocks of the West High- 

 lands, when charts did not supply the requisite information. His most 

 loved recreation from the labours of Lincoln's Inn was always a cruise 

 in the West Highlands. In the last summer of his life, after a naturally 

 strong constitution had broken down under the stress of mathematical 

 work on ships' magnetism by night, following days of hard work in his 

 legal profession, he regained something of health and strength in sailing 

 about with his boys in his yacht, between the beautiful coasts of the Erith 

 of Clyde, but not enough, alas, to carry him through unfavourable influ- 

 ences in the winter that followed. 



In 1826 he went to a school at Redland, near Bristol, for two years ; 

 and in 1828 he entered the University of Glasgow, where he not only 

 began to show his remarkable capacity for mathematical science in the 

 classes of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, but also distinguished 

 himself highly in Classics and Logic. Among his fellow students were 

 Norman Macleod and Archibald Campbell Tait, with both of whom 

 he retained a friendship throughout life. After completing his fourth 

 session in Glasgow, he joined in the summer of 1832 a reading party, 

 under Hopkins, at Barmouth in North Wales, and in the October fol- 

 lowing commenced residence in Trinity College, Cambridge. 



While still an undergraduate he wrote and communicated to the 

 Cambridge Philosophical Society a paper on Eresnel's wave-surface. 

 The mathematical tact and power for which he afterwards became cele- 

 brated were shown to a remarkable degree in this his first published 

 work. Eresnel, the discoverer of the theory, had determined analytically 

 the principal sections of the wave-surface, and then guessed its algebraic 

 equation. This he had verified, by calculating from it the perpendicular 

 iron, the centre to the tangent plane ; but the demonstration thus ob- 



