20 MEMOIR OF AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN. 



1827. cumstances won for him at once the respect and esteem 

 ^ "^" r> ^ e -^ or g an > wno > like himself, had thrown off the 

 restraints of a creed which he could not hold, and which 

 he refused to profess without holding. I think my father, 

 who was a good Hebrew scholar, afterwards helped him to 

 clear away some of the doubts and difficulties resulting 

 from mistranslations of Scripture, and fostered by the 

 early teaching of a sect not critically learned. 



We were living at Stoke Newington, in one of those 

 old houses with wooded grounds, of which so few remain 

 near London. It had formerly belonged to Daniel Defoe, 

 and Isaac Watts had inhabited it. In my father's time it 

 was the scene of many a pleasant gathering of men and 

 women of all degrees of intellectual ability, and of almost 

 every shade of political and religious opinion. The spot 

 where the old house stood has become the centre of a 

 district of streets and shops, built where the tall trees 

 grew, and nothing now remains to commemorate its 

 existence but the name of Defoe Street. 



Mr. De Morgan first came to our house with Mr. 

 Stratford. He then looked so much older than he was 

 that we were surprised by hearing his real age just 

 twenty-one. I was nineteen. We soon found out that 

 this ' rising man,' of whom great things were expected in 

 science, and who had evidently read so much, could rival 

 us in love of fun, fairy tales, and ghost stories, and even 

 showed me a new figure in cat's cradle. He was in 

 person very like what he continued through life, but 

 paler, probably from the effects of his recent Cambridge 

 reading. His hair and whiskers were very thick and 

 curly ; he was not bald till thirty years after. I re- 

 member his having a slight pleasure in saying things 

 which startled formal religionists, but which we, who 

 were not formal, soon understood to mean what they ex- 

 pressed, and no more. These sayings were humorous, and 

 like the half-mischievous jests of a very young man. It 

 was easy to see that a deep religious feeling underlay the 



