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classic. Contrariwise, his proficiency in this new field of learning 
seems to have even surpassed that which he achieved in ancient 
languages. And during vacations he was sure of living in an 
atmosphere w T here his studies would receive abundance of encourage- 
ment and sympathy. His sisters were ladies of cultivated taste, 
the youngest especially being a good Latin scholar. 
At Cambridge he found friends among contemporaries, and also 
some among seniors, who, in different ways, influenced his career. 
Among the seniors, besides the tutors already named, he was 
acquainted with Professor Sedgwick, with Professor Airy (after- 
wards the Astronomer Royal), and the aged Mr Simeon. Among 
those of his own standing may be named Mr Dickinson, afterwards 
representative in Parliament for Somersetshire ; and a member of a 
highly gifted family, a Merivale, brother of a distinguished Oxonian, 
W. Herman Merivale, and of equally eminent Cantabrigians, such as 
the present Dean of Ely. But specially intimate was he with a son 
of the Bight Hon. Henry Goulburn, sometime Chancellor of the 
Exchequer. In both classics and mathematics these two, Goulburn 
and Cotterill, were keen, but most friendly rivals. We cannot doubt 
but that from such guides and friends, and from several more like 
them, Henry Cotterill must have learned a great deal, though the 
intercourse cannot possibly have been a merely one-sided bargain. 
Some of them, as Merivale and Goulburn, were not permitted to 
display all their powers, having died at a comparatively early age. 
In 1832, a year known in British history as that of the passing of 
the Reform Bill, Henry Cotterill was elected a scholar of St John’s 
College, Cambridge. In that same year he won the University Bell 
Scholarship, one of the blue ribands of undergraduate life, as an 
evidence of proficiency in classics ; though its glories are perhaps 
slightly limited by its being confined to the sons of clergymen. 
In 1835 he took his Bachelor’s degree, his work at Cambridge 
culminating in the extraordinary success of his being Senior 
Wrangler, First Smith’s Prizeman, and ninth in the First Class of 
the Classical Tripos, which was headed by the Second Wrangler, his 
young friend Henry Goulburn. This achievement probably justifies 
the remark of the late Principal of the University of Edinburgh, 
Sir Alexander Grant, that Henry Cotterill left Cambridge bearing 
a greater weight of honours than any other student had gained. 
