OP ARTS AND SCIENCES. 195 



the college course. Dr. Bowditch's first volume was completed, and 

 the second entered for copyright, in 1829, the year of Peirce's gradu- 

 ation ; and the proof-sheets were regularly read by him." * 



That it should have been left to this country to open a way to 

 English-speaking nations for the study of the transcendental mathe- 

 matics of France and Germany may be explained by the following 

 lamentation of the younger Herschel, printed as late as IS-JrO.f After 

 acknowledging the celerity with which everything valuable in British 

 journals is republished, examined, and criticised in those on the Conti- 

 nent, he writes : — 



" This ought to encourage our men of science. They have a larger 

 audience, and a wider sympathy than they are, perhaps, aware of; 

 and however disheartening the general diffusion of smatterings of a 

 number of subjects, and the almost equally general indifference to 

 profound knowledge in any, among their own countrymen, may be, 

 they may rest assured that not a fact they may discover, nor a good 

 experiment they may make, but is instantly repeated, verified, and 

 commented upon in Germany, and we may add too in Italy. We 

 wish the obligation were mutual. Here, whole branches of Cotiti- 

 nental discovery are unstudied, and indeed almost unknown even by 

 name. It is in vain to conceal the melancholy truth. We are fast 

 dropping behind. In mathematics we have long since drawn the rein, 

 and given over a hopeless race. In chemistry the case is not much 

 better." 



At the present day Great Britain no longer lies under this severe 

 reproach. In pure mathematics there have been Boole, Hamilton, 

 Cayley, H. J. S. Smith, Clifford, and Sylvester ; and in applied 

 mathematics, Adams, Stokes, Sir William Thomson, Lord Rayleigh, 

 Challis, and Powell. But the highest mathematical faculty will be 

 always the prerogative of the few. Not many can say with Lagrange, 

 " I found chemistry as easy as algebra ! " 



The contrast is not less striking in this country between the present 

 condition of mathematical taste and acquirement and what they were 

 at the time of Bowditch's translation. This change has been largely 



* In tlie memoir of Dr. Bowditch by his son it is said : " Whenever one 

 hundred and twenty pages were printed, Dr. Bowditch had them bound in a 

 pamphlet form, and sent them to Professor Peirce, who, in this manner, read 

 the work for the first time. He returned the pages with the list of errata, 

 which were then corrected with a pen or otherwise in every copy of the 

 whole edition." 



t On Sound. Encyclo Metropolitana, vol. iv. p. 810. 



