542 



in his collection and republication of his numerous and important 

 papers and memoirs, originally printed either as separate works, or 

 in the Transactions of this Society and various journals and periodi- 

 cal works, he has conferred a lasting benefit on Science while doing 

 justice to one of its most distinguished ornaments. There can be no 

 doubt that this work must have cost him a vast amount of labour. 

 Few scientific writers, thinking so profoundly and arriving at such 

 important conclusions, have adopted a form of exposition so obscure 

 and difficult to follow as Dr. Young. The discussion of these me- 

 moirs in the Biographical volume of Dr. Peacock's work, however, 

 shows that he had completely overcome this difficulty, and obtained 

 a perfect appretiation both of their merit and method. In the 

 Archaeological department of this work he had for a coadjutor Mr. 

 Leitch, who edited the volume devoted to Dr. Young's Hierogly- 

 phical discoveries. This work occupied him at intervals spread 

 over a period of twenty years, and was only published in 1855, three 

 years before his own decease. 



Dr. Peacock was an active member of both the Cambridge Uni- 

 versity Commissions (of 1850 and 1855). Earnestly devoted to the 

 improvement of the University system, he had early made its sta- 

 tutes and history an object of especial study, and had stated, in the 

 form of observations published in 1840 on its constitution and stu- 

 dies, and in 1841 on its statutes, the result of his impressions on 

 a variety of points in which he conceived amelioration practicable. 

 He came therefore to this arduous and by no means popular duty 

 fully prepared, by intimate practical acquaintance with the working 

 of the then existing system, and by long meditation, resulting in an 

 entire conviction of the desirableness of a very considerable amount 

 of change in the directions indicated in the Report of the first Com- 

 mission. These views he throughout supported, however, with per- 

 fect candour and moderation, and with an earnest desire, as far as 

 possible, to conciliate opposition, and to wound no private or indivi- 

 dual feeling. 



In 1841 he accepted the office of Prolocutor of the Lower House 

 of the Convocation of Canterbury, which he filled till 1847, and 

 again from 1852 to 1857; an office for which the well -known tem- 

 perateness of his views on all those subjects where, in imperfectly- 

 balanced minds, strong feeling is apt to degenerate into passionate 



