Thirlwall left Charterhouse in December 1813, and proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, in October of the following year. How he spent the interval has not been recorded: possibly, like many other boys educated at a purely classical school, he was doing his best to acquire an adequate knowledge of mathematics, to his deficiency in which there are frequent references. He was so far successful in his efforts that he obtained the place of 22nd senior optime in 1818, when he proceeded in due course to his degree. Meanwhile, however great his distaste for the classics might have been at school, he had risen to high distinction in them; for he obtained the Craven University scholarship when only a freshman, as well as a Bell scholarship, and in the year of his degree the first Chancellor’s medal[31]. In the autumn of the same year he was elected Fellow of his college. It is provoking to have to admit that our history of what may be termed the first part of his Cambridge career must begin and end here. Of the second portion, when he returned to his college and became assistant tutor, we shall have plenty to say hereafter; but of his undergraduate days no record has been preserved. He had the good fortune to know Trinity College when society there was exceptionally brilliant; among his contemporaries were Sedgwick, Whewell, the two Waddingtons, his old friend Hare, who gained a Fellowship in the same year as himself, and many others who contributed to make that period of University history a golden age. We can imagine him in their company ‘moulding high thought in colloquy serene,’ and taking part in anything which might develop the general culture of the place; but beyond the facts that he was secretary to the Union Society in 1817, when the ‘debate was interrupted by the entrance of the proctors, who laid on its members the commands of the Vice-Chancellor to disperse, and on no account to resume their discussions[32],’ and that he had acquired a high reputation for eloquence as a speaker there[33], we know nothing definite about him. He does not appear to have made any new friends; but as Julius Hare was in residence during the same period as he was, the two doubtless saw much of each other; and it is probably to him that Thirlwall owed the love of Wordsworth which may be detected in some of his letters, his fondness for metaphysical speculation, and his wish to learn German. The only letters preserved are addressed to his old correspondent Mr Candler, and to his uncle Mr John Thirlwall, and they give us no information relevant to Cambridge. In writing to the latter he dwells on his fondness for ancient history, on his preference for that of Greece over that of Rome; he records the addition of the Italian and German languages to his stock of acquirements; and he describes with enthusiasm his yearning for foreign travel, which each year grew stronger: