18 MEMOIR OF AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN. 



1826. been expected to be senior or second wrangler, and his 

 lower degree was attributed by his contemporaries and 

 competitors to the wide mathematical reading by which 

 he was often led away from the course prescribed for 

 examination. This failure, in a possibly fallacious test, 

 was his own early, but unintentional, protest against 

 competitive examinations ; for which he felt excessive 

 disapprobation even before his experience as a teacher 

 showed him not only their mischievous effect upon mind 

 and health, but their insufficiency to determine the real 

 worth of a candidate for honours. In saying this I do 

 not detract from the merit of the gentlemen who stood 

 above Mr. De Morgan in the Tripos of 1826. All three 

 distinguished themselves in after life, but as he was un- 

 doubtedly the first in mathematical ability, it is likely 

 that their precedence of him might be due to the fact 

 that his love of the study led him to read more widely 

 and discursively than his friends on the very subject on 

 which excellence was to be tested. 



At the time of his taking his B.A. degree he came to 

 live with his two brothers, mother, and sister in London. 

 He had determined to go to the Bar, and was beginning his 

 legal studies, but he very much preferred teaching mathe- 

 matics to reading law. Something like the objection 

 urged by his friends to medicine was uppermost in his 

 mind, and he feared or imagined that in practising at the 

 Bar he might find it difficult to satisfy both his clients 

 and his conscience. But these scruples were overcome, 

 and he entered at Lincoln's Inn. 



