April 16, 1897.] 



SCIENCE. 



601 



led, and I am conscious it can be taught, 

 without finding the reasoning invigorated, 

 the invention quickened, the sentiment of 

 the orderly and beautiful awakened and en- 

 hanced, and reverence for truth, the foun- 

 dation of all integrity of character, con- 

 verted into a fixed principle of the mental 

 and moral constitution, according to the 

 old and expressive adage ' abeunt studia in 

 mores.' " 



But this silent year concealed still another 

 stunning blow of precisely the same sort, as 

 bears witness the following letter from Lord 

 Erougham to The Lord Panmure : 



"Beouqham, 

 Peivate. 28 Aug. 1855. 



My dear p. 



My learned excellent friend and brother 

 mathematician Mr. Sj'lvester is again a candidate for 

 the professorship at Woolwich on the death of Mr. 

 O'Brian who carried it against him last year. 



I entreat once more your favorable consideration of 

 this eminent man who has already to thank you for 

 your great kindness. 



Yours sincerely 



H. Beougham. 



On this third trial, backed by such an ar- 

 ray of credentials as no man ever presented 

 before, he barely scraped through, was ap- 

 pointed professor of mathematics at the 

 Eoyal Military Academy, and served at 

 Woolwich exactly 14 years, 10 months and 

 15 days. 



A single sentence of his will best express 

 lis greatest achievement there and his 

 manner of exit thence : 



" If Her Most Gracious Majesty should 

 ■ever be moved to recognize the palmary ex- 

 ploit of +he writer of this note in the field of 

 English science as having been the one 

 successfully to resolve a question and con- 

 quer an algebraical difficulty which had 

 exercised in vain for two centuries past, 

 since the time of Newton, the highest 

 mathematical intellects in Europe (Euler 

 Lagrange, Maclaurin, Waring among the 

 number), by conferring upon him some 



honorary distinction in commemoration 

 of the deed, he will crave the privilege of 

 being allowed to enter the royal presence, 

 not covered, like De Courcy, but bare- 

 footed, with rope around his waist, and a 

 jroose-quill behind his ear, in token of re- 

 pentant humility, and as an emblem of 

 convicted simplicity in having once sup- 

 posed that on such kind of success he could 

 found any additional title to receive fair and 

 just consideration at the hands of Her 

 Majesty's Govei-nment when quitting his 

 appointment as public professor at Wool- 

 wich under the coercive operation of a 

 non-Parliamentary retrospective and ut- 

 terly unprecedented War Office enactment." 

 Athenaeum Club, January 31, 1871. Of 

 course this means a row of barren years, 

 1870, 1871, 1872, 1873. 



The fortunate accident of a visit paid 

 Sylvester in the autumn of 1873 by Pafnuti 

 Lvovich Chebyshev, of the University of 

 St. Petersburg, reawakened our genius to 

 produce in a single burst of enthusiasm a 

 new branch of science. 



On Friday evening, January 23, 1874, 

 Sylvester delivered at the Royal Institu- 

 tion a lecture entitled ' On Eecent Discov- 

 eries in Mechanical Conversion of Motion," 

 whose ideas, carried on by two of his hear- 

 ers, H. Hart and A. B. Kempe, have made 

 themselves a permanent place even in the 

 elements of geometry and kinematics. A 

 synopsis of this lecture was published, but 

 so curtailed and twisted into the third per- 

 son that the life and flavor are quite gone 

 from it. I possess the unique manuscript 

 of this epoch-making lecture as actually 

 delivered. A few sentences will show how 

 characteristic and inimitable was the origi- 

 nal form : 



" The air of Eussia seems no less favor- 

 able to mathematical acumen than to a 

 genius for fable and song. LobachefiFsky, 

 the first to mitigate the severity of the 

 Euclidean code and to beat down the bars 



