UNIVERSITY DEGREE. 17 



useful rest to an over-active brain in the case of one who 1826-27. 

 did not care for riding or boating. Let it be good or bad 

 in a literary point of view, almost any work of fiction was 

 welcome, provided it had plenty of incident and dialogue, 

 and was not over-sentimental. He told me that he soon 

 exhausted the stores of the circulating library at Cam- 

 bridge. Like his schoolfellows, his college friends loved 

 him for his genial kindness, unwillingness to find fault, 

 and quiet love of fun, always excepting practical jokes, 

 with which he had no patience at all. 



During the last year and a half of his stay at Cambridge intention 

 Mr. De Morgan had some thoughts of becoming a phy- medicine. 

 sician. With his views on religion, his ordination was 

 out of the question ; but he liked the study of medicine, 

 and some friends advised him to read it with a pur- 

 pose. This intention did not last long. His old friend, 

 Mr. Hugh Standert, of Taunton, knew by experience 

 what was generally needed for success in medical practice, 

 and an acquaintance from infancy made him believe 

 that Augustus was not pliant enough, and could not, or 

 would not, be sufficiently ready to adapt himself to the 

 fancies and peculiarities he would meet with to make him 

 a popular doctor. Whether or not he had any special 

 genius for medicine is uncertain. His mother agreed 

 with Mr. Standert, and urged upon her son that his 

 success in medicine might depend on an amount of tole- 

 ration for ignorance and folly which, with his ' hatred of 

 everything low,' he would find a great trial. She begged 

 him to ' throw physic to the dogs,' and to turn his 

 thoughts to law. He complied, but did not like his des- 

 tination. Events proved that he was right, that he had 

 not found his proper place in the world's workshop. 



In 1827 he took the degree of fourth wrangler, 1827. 

 the order being Gordon, Turner, Cleasby, De Morgan. 

 This place, as one of his scientific biographers truly 

 says, ' did not declare his real power, or the exceptional 

 aptitude of his mind for mathematical study.' He had 



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