ENTERS THE UNIVERSITY. 11 



ship to his heavenly Father was too strong to allow him 1822. 

 to become atheistical, and his reasoning power too sound 

 to allow him to be sceptical as to the Christian revelation. 

 But the process of pulling down and building up took 

 time, and it was years before the impressions of his child- 

 hood could pass away, and the natural, healthy working 

 of the religious spirit could begin. Such an experiment 

 is a dangerous one for parents to try, and the greater the 

 early indications of religious feeling in a child, the more 

 cautious and forbearing should they be in their direction 

 of it. 



One lasting injury done to him by the compulsory at- 

 tendance so often at public worship, was his inability in 

 after life to listen for any time to speaking or preaching. 

 He said that the old troubles of the three services on 

 Sunday, and the ' dreary sermons ' came back to him, and 

 to get rid of these memories he thought of something 

 different from what was being said. 



In February 1823 he entered Trinity College, Cam- 1823. 

 bridge. His old schoolmaster, Mr. Parsons, with other 

 friends, had counselled his pupil's reading for honours in 

 Classics ; and Mrs. De Morgan's wish was that her son 

 should enter the Church as an Evangelical clergyman. She 

 had had all the responsibility^ of her children's education, 

 and, looking to the success of her eldest at Cambridge as 

 a most important element of his future welfare, naturally 

 trusted to the advice of her friends, and believed that all 

 attention given to Mathematics beyond what was needed 

 for his examination would be so much labour lost. He Age on 

 was but sixteen years and a half old when he went to 

 Cambridge, entering at a by -term. Though always 

 studious and persevering, yet at his first examination, 

 when his attention had been divided between the classical 

 reading he had forced himself to attend to, and the 

 Mathematics which he loved, he stood at the top of the 

 second class only. But his failure, as ghe considered it, 

 caused his mother great anxiety, and her letters to him 



