90 Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased. 



RIGHT REV. CHARLES GRAVES, BISHOP OF LIMERICK. 



1812-1899. 



CHARLES GRAVES was born in Dublin on November 6, 1812. He 

 was the youngest son of Mr. John Crosbie Graves, of the Irish Bar, 

 Chief Police Magistrate of Dublin, and Helena, daughter of the Rev. 

 Charles Perceval. He received his early education at a private school 

 near Bristol. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1829, and 

 obtained a scholarship a distinction at that time given only for 

 classical proficiency in 1832 ; he graduated, in 1834, as the First 

 Senior Moderator and Gold Medalist in Mathematics and Mathe- 

 matical Physics of his year. He was elected to a Fellowship in 1836, 

 and took deacon's orders in the same year. He was appointed the 

 Professor of Mathematics in the University of Dublin, in succession to 

 the celebrated James McCullagh, in 1843. He married, in 1840, Selina, 

 daughter of Dr. John Cheyne, Physician to H.M. Forces in Ireland. 

 Graves was made Dean of Clonfort in 1864, 'and was promoted to the 

 Bishopric of Limerick, Ardfert, and Aghadoe in 1866, during the vice- 

 royalty of Lord Kimberley, being one of the last bishops appointed 

 before the disestablishment of the Irish Church. His manners were 

 characterised by dignified courtesy, and, in his hours of relaxation, by a 

 genial and cordial ease and freedom. His wide culture, keen intelligence, 

 and conversational powers made him a most attractive and agreeable 

 companion. His calm judgment in practical affairs, combined with his 

 fine tact and temper, have been justly and highly commended. By 

 his liberal feeling towards those who differed from him and his kindness 

 of disposition he won the esteem and regard of all, and especially of 

 the people of the diocese over which for thirty-three years he presided, 

 without distinction of sect or party sentiments which were exhibited 

 in a marked manner on the occasion of his funeral. 



In 1841 he published a translation of the two elegant memoirs of 

 Chasles ' On the General Properties of Cones of the Second Degree and 

 of Spherical Conies.' In the copious notes which he appended to this 

 translation, he gave a number of new theorems of much interest, at 

 which he arrived by Chasles's mode of treatment. Amongst these may 

 be mentioned his extension of the construction of an ellipse, as traced 

 by a pencil which strains a thread passing over two fixed points, by sub- 

 stituting for those points a given ellipse, with which the locus described 

 is confocal. This he deduced from the more general theorem on 

 Spherical Conies ; the latter being arrived at from its reciprocal theorem, 



