year he won the prize awarded by Trinity College for decla-
mation, his subject being Sir Walter Raleigh; as a consequence
he was called on to deliver the annual oration at the next Com-
memoration of Benefactors of the College. He chose for his
subject, Dr. Whewell, Master of the College, eminent for his
philosophical and scientific attainments, whose death had
occurred but recently. He treated it in an original and un-
expected manner; Dr.. Whewell's claim to admiration and
emulation being put on the ground of his intellectual life exem-
plifying in an eminent degree the active and creating faculty.
"Thought is powerless, except it make something outside of
itself; the thought which conquers the world is not contemplative
but active. And it is this that I am asking you to worship
to-day."

To obtain high honors in the Mathematical Tripos, a student
must put himself in special training under a mathematican,
technically called a coach, who is not one of the regular college
instructors, nor one of the University professors, but simply
makes a private business of training men to pass that par-
ticular examination. Skill consists in the rate at which one can
solve and more especially write out the solution of problems.
It is excellent training of a kind, but there is no time for study-
ing fundamental principles, still less for making any philosoph-
ical investigations. Mathematical insight is something higher
than skill in solving problems; consequently the senior wrangler
has not always turned out the most distinguished mathematician
in after life. We have seen that De Morgan was fourth wrangler.
Clifford also could not be kept to the dust of the race-course;
but such was his innate mathematical insight that he came
out second wrangler. Other instances of the second wrangler
turning out the better mathematician are Whewell, Sylvester,
Kelvin, Maxwell.

In 1868, when he was 23 years old, he was elected a Fellow
of his College; and while a resident fellow, he took part in the
eclipse expedition of 1870 to Italy, and passed through the
experience of a shipwreck near Catania on the coast of the
island of Sicily. In 1871 he was appointed professor of Ap-plied

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