24 MEMOIR OF AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN. 



1827. from taking an active part in the first movements, but he 

 joined the general committee on his recovery, became a 

 shareholder, and on the election of a council and officers 

 was appointed one of four auditors. 



The establishment of University College, called at first 

 the Loidon University, promised to fulfil the hopes of all 

 friends of education, and was hailed as a forerunner of 

 religious freedom. My father naturally took the liveliest 

 interest in its progress. Mr. De Morgan welcomed the 

 opening of the College, as not only meeting a great 

 want of the time, but as offering to himself a prospect of 

 leaving the study of Law, which he did not like, for the 

 teaching and pursuit of Science. When the time came 

 for the appointment of Professors he sent his name in as 

 a candidate for the Mathematical chair. He was one of 

 thirty-two candidates. The committee for examining tes- 

 timonials found among his the highest certificates from 

 Dr. Thorp, Dr. Peacock, Professor Airy, Professor Cod- 

 dington, and others, his Cambridge teachers. He was 

 much younger than any of his competitors, but his election 

 to the chair of Mathematics was made unanimously, and 

 afterwards confirmed by the Council on February 23, 1828, 

 being formally communicated to him without delay. 

 Election to It was a little characteristic incident connected with 

 ship. the appointment of the future Mathematical Professor, 



that while the election was going on in one part of the 

 college, and he with some others of the candidates were in 

 the common room, he took up a volume lying on the table, 

 which proved to be Miss Porter's ' Field of the Forty 

 Footsteps.' The scene of this novel is laid in the fields 

 which formed the site of the building and its surround- 

 ings. It was said that, some years before, the marks of 

 the weird 6 forty footsteps ' might still be seen in the 

 ground, but builders and stonemasons had effectually 

 removed them, and fanciful comparisons were drawn 

 between the effacement of these marks of the brothers' 

 rivalry and the barbarity of their lady love as the new 



