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posed of members of the University, of representatives of the 

 embassies of Russia and America, as well as of various learned 

 societies and of personal friends, gathered to pay him their last 

 homage of respect and reverence. 



Sufficient has been said to show that Cayley was a man of general 

 activities ; but his scientific work and his public duties by no means 

 exhausted or limited his general interests. 



It has already been stated that, as an undergraduate, he was fond 

 of reading novels ; this practice remained with him all his days. He 

 preferred a novel of the old orthodox type with a " happy ending "; 

 and though his greatest delight was in the older novels, a modern 

 book, such as 'Beside the Bonnie Briar Bush' (which he read quite 

 late in 1894), met with words of warm praise. He had a good 

 memory, and used to discuss plots and characters with considerable 

 animation. The two novelists, by whose works many English 

 people are divided into one or other of two classes, did not affect him 

 much ; Thackeray he read but did not like, and he would not 

 read Dickens. His favourite authors were Scott and Jane Austen ; 

 all their works had been read by him many times, and they were read 

 aloud to him during the long period of his illness. ' Guy Manuering ' 

 .and ' The Heart of Midlothian,' among Scott's, and ' Persuasion,' 

 among Jane Austen's, were the books he liked the best. He also 

 was fond of George Eliot's novels, particularly of ' Bomola.' Indeed, 

 though he had aversions, his taste was somewhat general. Com- 

 mendation of a book was, enough to make him willing to try it ; and 

 there was only one limitation to his range of novel-r-eading he had 

 an instinctive abhorrence of anything that suggested either coarse- 

 ness or vulgarity. 



His English reading was not confined to novels. He had a keen 

 liking for many of Shakespeare's plays, notably ' Much Ado about 

 Nothing,' and some of the historical dramas. He delighted in 

 Milton's shorter poems, though he would not tolerate ' Paradise 

 Lost.' Scott's poems were frequently read ; and he had a great 

 appreciation of Byron's ' Tales ' and of Coleridge's ' Ancient Mariner.' 

 Grote's ' History of Greece ' and Macaulay's ' History of England ' he 

 read repeatedly and with zest ; and he never seemed to tire of 

 Lockhart's ' Life of Scott.' 



He was also a good linguist. He knew French well ; it was a 

 second writing-language to him, as will be seen from the large 

 number of papers, written in French, which occur in his collected 

 mathematical papers. He read (but he did not talk) German and 

 Italian with ease, and his Greek remained fresh throughout his life. 

 This last power may have been due to the admiration he felt for 

 Plato ; he referred to the ' Republic ' and the ' Theretetus ' in his 

 Presidential Address ; and, on the afternoon of the day of the " Greek 



