But to return to the special subject of our essay. Of Whewell’s boyhood, school days, and undergraduateship, few details have been preserved. His father was a master carpenter, residing at Lancaster, where William, the eldest of his seven children, was born in 1794. His father is mentioned as a man of probity and intelligence; but his mother, whom he unfortunately lost when he was only eleven years old, appears to have been a woman of superior talents and considerable culture, who enriched the ‘Poet’s Corner’ of the weekly _Lancaster Gazette_ with occasional contributions in verse. William was about to be apprenticed to his father, when his superior intelligence attracted the attention of Mr Rowley, curate of the parish and master of the grammar school. The father objected at first: ‘He knows more about parts of my business than I do,’ he said, ‘and has a special turn for it.’ However, after a week’s reflection, he yielded, mainly out of deference to Mr Rowley, who further offered to find the boy in books, and educate him free of expense. Of his school experiences, Professor Owen, who was one of his schoolfellows, has contributed some delightful reminiscences. After mentioning that he was a tall, ungainly youth, he adds: ‘The rate at which Whewell mastered both English grammar and Latin accidence was a marvel; and before the year was out he had moved upward into the class including my elder brother and a dozen boys of the same age. Then it was that the head-master, noting to them the ease with which Whewell mastered the exercises and lessons, raised the tale and standard. Out of school I remember remonstrances in this fashion: “Now, Whewell, if you say more than twenty lines of Virgil to-day, we’ll wallop you.” But that was easier said than done. I have seen him, with his back to the churchyard wall, flooring first one, then another, of the “walloppers,” and at last public opinion in the school interposed. “Any two of you may take Whewell in a fair stand-up fight, but we won’t have any more at him at once.” After the fate of the first pair, a second was not found willing. My mother thought “it was extremely ungrateful in _that boy Whewell_ to have discoloured both eyes of her eldest so shockingly.” But Mr Rowley said, “Boys will be boys,” and he always let them fight it fairly out.’ In after years Whewell spoke of the good training he had received in arithmetic, geometry, and mensuration from Mr Rowley; but it is believed that his recollections of his first school were not wholly agreeable; and probably he was not sorry when he was removed to the grammar school at Heversham, in Westmoreland. This took place in 1810. The reason for it was that he might compete for an exhibition of 50_l._ per annum, at Trinity College, which he was so fortunate as to obtain. At his second school he paid great attention to classical studies, and practised versification in Greek and Latin.