CORRESPONDENCE, 1846-55. 217 



singular job of the three. What if he should say that the 8th, 1852. 

 9th, and 10th centuries never existed ? I wish they hadn't. 



When De Gasparis gets his next planet, he and Hind will be 

 six of one and half a dozen of the other. Do you mean to say that 

 just as we have got the place snug, drained, lighted, and electro- 

 wired and railed, that as soon as we shall just have learnt to have 

 an idea of behaving to each other like people whose posterity 

 may in time be Christians, we shall have to become fossils, and 

 megatheriums, and such like, for smarter chaps than ourselves 

 to write books upon ? I will never believe it till I see it, and 

 then only half. Why, it is only just four hundred years since 

 printing was invented. A book, with ordinary care, will last a 

 thousand years. It is astonishing what good condition those of 

 1480 are in, even after a course of bookstalls. Surely the 

 nature of things is to live their lives out. . . . 



Yours truly, 



A. DE MORGAN. 



To Dean Peacock. 



7 Camden Street, Aug. 30, 1852. 



MY DEAK SIK, . . . All I know about Young personally is, 

 that one evening in 1828, when I first pushed my nose into the 

 scientific world, I was presented to Young, Davies Gilbert, and 

 Wollaston. 



Wollaston said, when I was introduced as Professor of 

 Mathematics in the University of London, * Are they to have 

 a Professor of Mathematics ? ' I told him they had one, and 

 that I was he. Nothing more passed. Young lifted his eye- 

 glass, and made his bow serve the double purpose of acknow- 

 ledging the introduction, and bringing his eyes to the lenses. 

 He made me certain that he saw me, and impressed me with an 

 idea from his manner that he was fine. Perhaps he was only shy 

 shyness takes every other form to avoid its own. 



Davies Gilbert was the only one of the three who had the 

 manners of a man of the world. I believe I never saw the two 

 first again. 



I never knew till many years afterwards that I was well 

 acquainted with some members of Young's family. His brother, 

 Robert Young, was a Quaker, who married, as I was told when 

 a boy, a lady, who was not a Quakeress, and was disowned 

 by the sect. This lady was a most intimate friend of my 

 mother, and Robert Young is one of the earliest persons I can 



