In his twentieth year he matriculated at the university of Seville, but his career as a student was undistinguished.
The emperor Zeno enacted that no one could become patricius who had not been praejectus militum, consul or magister militum, but less careful emperors gave the title to their favourites, however young and undistinguished.
He came of an intellectual stock, his grandfather and father having both been physicians of eminence and professors of one or other of the branches of medical science; his mother too belonged to a family not undistinguished in intellectual power.
Besides these the group also includes a multitude of related forms which, from their aquatic habits and generally inconspicuous size, and from the fact that they are commonly neither edible nor noxious, are little known except to naturalists and are undistinguished by any popular names.
A very happy married life at home contented him, and at the opening of the Free Trade hall in January 1840 he sat with the Rochdale deputation, undistinguished in the body of the meeting.