with him have made the name and consideration of this literary community 

 of Cambridge and Boston what they are, and whose successors are not yet 

 visible among us ! 



FROM THE BOSTON JOURNAL, OCT. 7. 



THE life of a professor generally displays few strange or startling inci- 

 dents ; and the record of Professor Peirce's life must be sought in what he 

 was, rather than in what happened to him. As a mathematician he attained 

 the first rank ; and he had few, if any, companions in his highest intellectual 

 labors. He was noted for his directness and conciseness of demonstration, 

 and by the intuitive insight with which he approached the most difficult 

 problems. When engaged upon any difficult question his entire energies 

 were bent upon it, so that, although he had brought forward works nearly 

 to the time of publication, he would be so far led away into other regions 

 of thought that he found it difficult and irksome to return. Thus it was 

 that his published works are few; although his contributions to the science 

 of mathematics are most important, and his text-books and elementary 

 treatises are widely circulated. . . . To Professor Peirce belongs the dis- 

 tinction of being one of the founders of a new branch of mathematics, the 

 final form of which is not yet determined, but which may prove to be the 

 great event in the mathematical history of this century. The contributions 

 to this branch have been made by Sir W. Rowan Hamilton in his " Quater- 

 nions," H. Grassmann, in his " Ausdtknumgslekref and Professor Peirce 

 in his " Linear Associative Algebra." This work has been published in an 

 edition of some one hundred copies, which was not put in type, but litho- 

 graphed from the manuscript. As an astronomer Professor Peirce's record 

 is high, although he has written no work on the science. 



