352 Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased. 



grown to a head. The Senior Fellows were not what they had been 

 men co-opted in the prime of life, who had escaped the allurements of 

 matrimony and the seductions of great ecclesiastical positions. They 

 were the survivors of a set of men whose constitutions had been most 

 thoroughly tested by the rigours of an appalling examination. Since 

 Dr. 'Salmon obtained Fellowship, the number of professorships and 

 lectureships has been doubled. Many of the professorships then held 

 by Fellows or by ex-Fellows are held by Fellows no longer. A new 

 and most important body of men has come into existence the non-Fellow 

 professors men hardly thought of in the days when all power and all 

 authority was vested in the Provost and the seven Senior Fellows. One 

 might have anticipated that he who had done so much in founding the 

 Academic Council, and who had felt so keenly the subordination of his 

 former positions, would have been instrumental in drawing closer 

 together the members of the teaching staff. It may have been that 

 his initiative was blunted by his twenty-five years of tutorial duties. 

 It may have been that his duties as Provost for many years the one 

 really strong man on the Board were so laborious that he had little 

 time to consider matters which did not claim his immediate attention. 

 There can, however, be no doubt that in later years his sympathies did 

 not lie with the development of science. As a member of the Board 

 of Intermediate Education, he did not take part with those who tried 

 to foster the study of science in the secondary schools in Ireland. 



While it may be questioned whether he did all that was possible to 

 widen the scope of her usefulness, Trinity College must ever be 

 grateful to her late Provost for the noble conservatism with which he 

 defended her independence. He was willing to afford Eoman Catholics 

 every facility for religious exercises within the walls of Trinity 

 College, but he would suffer no clerical interference, whether from the 

 Church of Ireland or from the Church of Rome. The University 

 which gave Sylvester the B.A. degree, which his own University 

 refused because he would not subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles, 

 retains its old spirit of tolerance. The remaining tests were swept 

 away by the Tests Act of 1873. 



Salmon's power and influence were such that it was difficult, if not 

 impossible, to carry out any change of which he disapproved. It is 

 true he did not favour rendering Greek an optional subject, or 

 admitting women to the University of Dublin. But these changes 

 were made in his extreme old age, when he had grown weary of 

 prolonged controversy. He appeared to take the keenest delight in 

 fighting a case. However carefully prepared his opponent might be, 

 Salmon generally found a weak part in his armour. He would not 

 always attack an obvious defect in a proposal ; he would employ the 



