EAELY DISPOSITION. 9 



The testimony of Mr. Reece to the affection felt for 1822. 

 their schoolfellow by most of his companions has been 

 confirmed to me by one or two of the few who remain in 

 this world, and I find in letters from friends many little 

 confirmations. 



f I have known more of you than you of me, 5 his friend 

 Mr. Leslie Ellis wrote to him during the long and suffer- 

 ing illness which preceded his death. 'Even while you 

 were yet at Mr. Parsons' and I was a child I had heard of 

 you, and of course in later years I have heard of you very 

 often ; but though everybody spoke well of you, I was left 

 to find out for myself how kind you could be to a sick 

 man how kind, I think I must infer, to all about you.' 



And another time, 



c I had, since your recollection of Parsons, two 

 brothers there, and I remember my father speaking of 

 having seen you, and saying that the usher complained 

 that you were " such a glutton," meaning in the matter 

 of reading; but I cannot recollect whether he spoke of 

 mathematical or classical reading, or of both.' 



But the boy was probably, at school, very like what he 

 was at home, when his mother, who loved him fondly, 

 described him as a quiet, thoughtful boy, occasionally but 

 not often irritable, and never so well pleased as when he 

 could get her to listen to his reading and explanations, and 

 * always speculating on things that nobody else thought 

 of, and asking her questions far beyond her power to 

 answer.' 



One element of his early teaching strongly tinged his 

 character in after life. Col. De Morgan, who was a 

 strictly religious man, of a rather evangelical, as it is 

 falsely called, turn of feeling, was premature, seeing the 

 sensitiveness and grasp of the mind he had to deal with, 

 in inculcating rigid doctrines, and insisting on formal 

 observances. The religious training of his son thus begun, 

 was continued, after his father left England, by his 

 excellent mother, who, with the best intentions in the 



