While in residence at Cambridge, Pritchard was fortunate in 

 having the assistance of Charles Jeffreys as his private tutor an 

 excellent mathematician, and Second Wrangler in Airy's year, 1823. 

 He, from the first, took a good position in the college examinations, 

 and always secured the second place in each year. The practical 

 result of this success was of the highest importance to him, as the 

 accumulation of exhibitions was ultimately sufficient to defray all the 

 necessary expenses of his college education. In the Mathematical 

 Tripos of 1830, Pritchard attained the high position of Fourth 

 Wrangler. He was himself fully satisfied with the result, though it 

 was the general opinion of the college tutors who had watched his 

 career that he had hardly done himself full justice in the examina- 

 tion. His position in the Tripos was, however, sufficient to secure 

 for him a limited number of private pupils, without interfering with 

 his classical studies, to which he now devoted most of his time, as he 

 was unwilling to risk the Fellowship examination, then almost wholly 

 classical. In March, 1832, he attained the height of his ambition, by- 

 being elected a Fellow of his college. Pupils now flocked to him in 

 superabundance, and appearances seemed to indicate that he was 

 destined to settle down as a resident Fellow, and take an active 

 share in the public tuition of his college. But other circumstances 

 soon arose, preventing any arrangement of this kind. Some scholastic 

 employment having been offered to him in connexion with a new 

 proprietary school in London, he determined to forego his University 

 prospects, and to seek his fate in the larger world of the metropolis. 

 Writing more than fifty years afterwards, on referring to this im- 

 portant crisis in his life, he remarked that " looking back now through 

 the vista of half a century, I cannot wholly satisfy my mind as to all 

 the motives which impelled me, at so early a period of a successful 

 academical career, to relinquish the natural hopes and ambitions 

 which must have legitimately presented themselves. It might have 

 been impatience. But still, looking back through the busy occupa- 

 tions of many subsequent years, I am inclined to doubt if I could 

 have occupied them more advantageously in any other role of life 

 than that in which I have actually engaged." 



When still an undergraduate, Pritchard's originality of thought 

 often induced him to consider other mathematical questions than 

 those required in the college examinations. He was especially 

 interested with certain trigonometrical relations brought to light by 

 the mathematician Poinsot, which led him to examine other writings 

 of the "same author, more particularly his treatise on the 'Theory of 

 Statical Couples.' Pritchard became quite enamoured with the 

 singular power and wide application of the theory, and also with the 

 clear light that Poinsot had thrown on much that had hitherto been 

 obscure in the theory of mechanics. He has said with enthusiasm : 



