IV 



ordinary succession of mathematicians of whom England is justly 

 proud. Their achievements in mathematical science have done much 

 to render their University one of the acknowledged chief mathe- 

 matical schools of the world. 



Cayley was elected a Fellow of Trinity and admitted to fellowship 

 on 3rd October, 1842, at an age younger than any other fellow of 

 the college, at least in the present century ; and he was promoted 

 from the position of Minor Fellow to that of Major Fellow on 2nd 

 July, 1845, the year in which he proceeded to his M.A. degree. He 

 was an Assistant Tutor of the College for three years ; but such a 

 post was then of an almost nominal character, and there appears to 

 be no indication that any of the mathematical teaching of the College 

 fell to him. He did, indeed, accept some private pupils : his life-long 

 friend, Canon Venables, has given a pleasant account* of a reading- 

 party which Cayley took to Aberfeldie in 1842. 



His pupils, however, did not tie him strictly to Cambridge, for it 

 appears that the latter half of the year 1843 was devoted to conti- 

 nental rambles. The summer was spent in Switzerland where his 

 zest for walking and for mountain- climbing, a pleasure that never 

 failed while his health lasted, found an active outlet : he had become a 

 member of the Alpine Club in its comparatively early days. The 

 last four months of the year were spent in Italy, partly in the North 

 and in Florence, partly in Rome and Naples. It may have been on 

 this tour that he acquired his love for both painting and architecture. 

 The works of painters such as Masaccio, Giovanni Bellini, Perugino, 

 and Luini, then first became known to him ; they proved a delight at 

 the time and remained a happy remembrance with him. 



These and other continental journeys from time to time, while he 

 remained in residence as a Fellow of his College, were his relaxations. 

 He had no formal lecturing and he did not attempt to obtain a large 

 number of private pupils. The leisure that he thus secured was turned 

 to the best, and to him the most pleasant, of uses, in carrying out 

 mathematical researches. It was, indeed, as an undergraduate that 

 Cayley began the marvellous series of publications which, extending 

 over more than fifty years of his life, have been concerned with 

 practically every branch of pure mathematics as well as with theo- 

 retical dynamics and physical astronomy. 



The time seemed ripe for the outburst of some mathematical 

 activity. By the efforts of Herschel, Peacock, and Whewell, Cam- 

 bridge teaching had been set free from the bonds that restricted 

 methods of procedure to those which had proved effective in 

 Newton's days ; and the struggle to secure the admittance of analy tica. 

 methods had been successfully completed. One sign of the new 

 freedom was the foundation of the ' Cambridge Mathematical 

 * ' Cfuardian/ 6th Feb., 1895, p. 201. 



