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CHAPTER VI. 
ADAM SEPGWICK AND WILLIAM BUCKLAND. 
Adam Sedgwick was born on the 22nd of March, 1785, at Dent. 
His father was the vicar of the parish ; a man of great local influence 
and of considerable learning. The Sedgwicks belonged to that fine 
old race of small landed proprietors named " Statesmen," which is 
now fast disappearing even from the northern dales. Among them 
the Sedgwicks held a prominent place, their names occurring in the 
register of Dent as far back as 1672. In 1756 Sedgwick's father 
entered as an undergraduate at St. Catherine's College in Cambridge. 
He took holy orders and returned to his native place, and became 
Vicar of Dent. The childhood of his son Adam was spent among the 
hearty, straightforward dalesmen, and he was a general favourite 
with them all. He delighted in every kind of sport and outdoor 
exercise, and he had always a quick eye for anything curious and 
unusual which he might come across in his scrambles amongst the 
crags and fells which surrounded the valley. His education was 
begun under his father's eye in the Old Grammar School at Dent. 
He afterwards went to the Sedbergli School, which had a high 
reputation and was attended at that time by the sons of most of the 
leading statesmen, as well as by many others who have made their 
mark in the world. He boarded along with three other boys at a 
farmhouse kept by a Quaker. " We were treated by the family," he 
says, " with infinite kindness, and our happy freedom made us the 
the envy of our schoolfellows." It was here he gained the habit of 
early rising, which he kept all through his after life to the very last. 
From Sedbergli he went to Cambridge, where he entered Trinity 
College in 1804. He read chiefly mathematics, and during the vaca- 
tions continued his studies with tlie self-taught mathematician, 
