http://galton.org
<<prevMemories of My Life by Francis Galton : image 0066next>>

OCR Rendition - approximate

Recognized HTML document

CAMBRIDGE

59

same time I wondered at its narrowness, for not a soul seemed to have the slightest knowledge of, or interest in, what I had acquired in my medical education and what we have since learnt to call Biology. The religious dogmas were of a more archaic type than I had latterly learnt to hold. I thought that just as the medicals wanted the thoroughness of the classicals and of the mathematicians, so these wanted at least an elementary knowledge of what was familiar to the medicals. Great and salutary changes have long since been introduced, and the above criticism, which was perfectly just at the time, is now, I believe and trust, almost wholly out of date.

I stood far behind the majority of my fellowfreshmen in classics, but less so in elementary mathematics, which were then much neglected in schools ; for I had an innate love of them, and had indulged in some little private study. I pass lightly over my first year, which was a period of general progress, without much of note, until the first vacation arrived.

I then formed one of a reading party who went to Keswick in Cumberland, and had rooms in the same house with the two tutors, Matheson and Eddis. It was called " Browtop," and was then a detached villa with a wide prospect, situated in the district that now bears that name. One other pupil lived there also ; the rest had lodgings in the town. Being in those years careless of rain and little sensitive to the enervating air of the Lake District, I found myself perfectly happy. The hills being moderate in height and the distances small, an afternoon sufficed easily