Jacob. Whewell. Such is the order in which we are fixed after a week's examination.... I had before been given to understand that a great deal depended upon being able to write the greatest possible quantity in the smallest time, but of the rapidity which was actually necessary I had formed the most distant idea. I am upon no occasion a quick writer, and upon subjects where I could not go on without sometimes thinking a little I soon found myself considerably behind. I was therefore surprised, and even astonished, to find myself bracketed off, as it is called, in the second place; that is, on the day when a new division of the classes is made for the purpose of having a closer examination of the respective merits of men who come pretty near to each other, I was not classed with anybody, but placed alone in the second bracket. The man who is at the head of the list is of Caius College, and was always expected to be very high, though I do not know that anybody expected to see him so decidedly superior as to be bracketed off by himself. The tendency to cultivate mechanical rapidity was a grave evil, and lasted long after Whewell's time. According to rumour the highest honours in 1845 were obtained by assiduous practice in writing[61]. The devotion of the Cambridge school to geometrical and fluxional methods had led to its isolation from contemporary continental mathematicians. Early in the nineteenth century the evil consequence of this began to be recognized; and it was felt to be little less than a scandal that the researches of Lagrange, Laplace, and Legendre were unknown to many Cambridge mathematicians save by repute. An attempt to explain the notation and methods of the calculus as used on the continent was made by Woodhouse, later professor in the University, who stands out as the apostle of the new movement. It is doubtful if Woodhouse could have brought analytical methods into vogue by himself; but his views were enthusiastically adopted by three students, Peacock, Babbage, and Herschel, who succeeded in carrying out the reforms he had suggested. They created an Analytical Society which Babbage explained was formed to advocate "the principles of pure _d_-ism as opposed to the _dot_-age of the University." The character of the instruction in mathematics at the University has at all times largely depended on the text-books in use, and the importance of good books of this class was emphasized by a traditional rule that questions should not be set on a new subject in the tripos unless it had been discussed in some treatise suitable and available for Cambridge students[62]. Hence the importance attached to the publication of the work on analytical trigonometry by Woodhouse in 1809, and of the works on the differential calculus issued by members of the Analytical Society in 1816 and 1820.