202 
stand triumphant when they pass through the ordeal of public 
opinion. These grounds, I feel bound to say, exist very forcibly 
in the present instance. I have not yet seen the work which the 
Council has this year recommended to the Academy as deserving of 
this honour ; but I know, and have satisfied myself by the inquiries 
I have made of one well acquainted with this work, and one than 
whom there is no person more competent to give a weighty opinion 
—I have, I say, satisfied myself, and, if I named my authority, you 
would all of you, I think, be equally satisfied, that in this instance 
also, the Academy will dohonour to itself by honouring the author of 
this valuable work. On a subject like that of which he treats—the 
Calculus of Variations—parts of which have, for a century and a half, 
employed the noblest mathematical intellects in the world, it is not 
to be supposed that any one individual, however highly gifted he 
may be, can add much to the existing stock of our knowledge; yet, 
even in that respect, this work contains improvements of previously 
existing methods and other advantages, which, if their author had 
given them to us in a separate manner, would themselves have formed 
no ordinary title to fame. But this would have been a very con- 
tracted mode of considering the question. A far greater service has 
been rendered by the manner in which this task has been executed, 
to the advancement of geometry, than could possibly have been done 
by the author, if he had had in view merely the extension of his 
fame in this branch of high analysis. By devoting himself to a task 
far less attractive, and less remunerative to the exertions bestowed 
upon it than many other pursuits, and by descending from the 
more desirable position of an inventor to the humbler but more 
useful one of enabling others to place themselves on a level with 
himself, by compiling, for their use, an excellent elementary treatise, 
he has conferred on his species a benefit of the highest order; and, 
for this reason, therefore, as a reward for a work admirably per- 
formed, and calculated to be eminently useful, but as little likely to 
be given to the world as it was desirable that it should be so,—I fully 
concur in the adjudication of the Council, and I am sure, you, gentle- 
men, will agree with me. Therefore, Mr. Jellett (turning to that 
gentleman), I present you with this Medal, and I may observe that 
I have an added pleasure in presenting it, because I had the good 
