declaring the result of the examination: I saw at the top the name of Walter _bracketed alone_ (as he was); in the bracket below were _Fiott_, _Hustler_, _Jephson_. I looked down and could not find my own name till I got to Bolland, when my pride took fire, and I said, "I must have beaten _that man_, so I will look up again"; and on looking up carefully I found the nail had been passed through my name, and I was at the top bracketed _alone_, even above Walter. You may judge what my feelings were at this discovery; it is the only instance of two such brackets, and it made my fortune--that is, made me independent, and gave me an immense college reputation. It was said I was more than half of the examination before anyone else. The two moderators were Hornbuckle, of St John's, and Brown (Saint Brown), of Trinity. The Johnian congratulated me. I said perhaps I might be challenged; he said, "Well, if you are you're quite safe--you may sit down and do nothing, and no one would get up to you in a whole day." ... Latterly the Cambridge examinations seem to turn upon very different matters from what prevailed in my time. I think a Cambridge education has for its object to make good members of society--not to extend science and make profound mathematicians. The tripos questions in the Senate-house ought not to go beyond certain limits, and geometry ought to be cultivated and encouraged much more than it is. To this De Morgan replied: Your letter suggests much, because it gives possibility of answer. The _branches_ of algebra of course mainly refer to the second part of Wood, now called the theory of equations. Waring was his guide. Turner--whom you must remember as head of Pembroke, senior wrangler of 1767--told a young man in the hearing of my informant to be sure and attend to quadratic equations. "It was a quadratic," said he, "made me senior wrangler." It seems to me that the Cambridge _revivers_ were [Woodhouse,] Waring, Paley, Vince, Milner. You had Dealtry's MSS. He afterwards published a very good book on fluxions. He merged his mathematical fame in that of a Claphamite Christian. It is something to know that the tutor's MS. was in vogue in 1800-1806. Now--how did you get your conic sections? How much of Newton did you read? From Newton direct, or from tutor's manuscript? Surely Fiott was our old friend Dr Lee. I missed being a pupil of Hustler by a few weeks. He retired just before I went up in February 1823. The echo of Hornbuckle's answer to you about the challenge has lighted on Whewell, who, it is said, wanted to challenge Jacob, and was answered that he could not beat [him] if he were to write the whole day and the other wrote nothing. I do not believe that Whewell would have listened to any such dissuasion.