140 Notices respecting New Books, 



Here is an opportunity for persons of moderate scientific 

 attainments, who will carry with them good instruments and 

 observe them with care, to contribute to the improvement of a 

 department of science which is yet far from having attained to 

 the desirable degree of perfection. 



Pisa, January 1864. 



XXVI. Notices respecting New Books. 



The Mathematical and other Writings of Robert Leslie Ellis, M.A., 

 late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Edited by W.Walton, 

 M.A. With a Biographical Memoir, by the Very Rev. Harvey 

 Goodwin, D.D., Dean of Ely. Cambridge, 1863. 8vo, pp. 427. 



PT1HIS volume is of a memorial rather than of a strictly scientific 

 •*- character. It contains in a collected form the miscellaneous 

 memoirs and notes of a man of rare promise, but who was taken 

 away prematurely and under peculiarly painful circumstances. Mr. 

 Ellis, the youngest of a family of six children, was born at Bath, 

 August 25, 1817. He was carefully educated at home, and it may 

 be mentioned that one of his mathematical tutors was the late Mr. 

 T. S. Davies. He entered as a pensioner at Trinity College, Cam- 

 bridge, and went into residence in October 1836. He appears to 

 have brought a large stock of mathematical knowledge with him to 

 Cambridge, and pursued his studies there without the aid of a pri- 

 vate tutor until his last year, when he read with Mr. Hopkins, who 

 remembers that he possessed an extent and definiteness of acquire- 

 ment and a maturity of thought so unusual " that I could hardly con- 

 ceive when he could have been a boy." He took his B.A. degree 

 in January 1840, when he was Senior Wrangler, Dr. Goodwin being 

 second in the same year. In the following October he was elected 

 Fellow of Trinity College, and continued to hold his fellowship till 

 1849, when, as he did not take orders, he vacated it in due course. 

 He inherited from his mother a highly nervous constitution and 

 extremely feeble health — circumstances which prevented his enter- 

 ing any active profession. He was, it is true, called to the bar ; but 

 though he had paid great attention to the principles of Civil Law, he 

 did not study long with a view to practice. In like manner he once 

 thought of attempting to enter Parliament, and his name was pub- 

 licly brought forward as a possible candidate for the representation 

 of Bath, but was wiihdrawn on the score of his ill health. Neither 

 ill health, however, nor nervous constitution impaired his powers as 

 a student : he seems to have been in an eminent degree capable of 

 acquiring and retaining a knowledge of many distinct subjects ; and 

 though his mathematical power was great, it is said by his friends to 

 have been no greater than several of his other powers — an opinion 

 which his remains bear out. He resided mostly at Cambridge, pur- 

 suing various studies, not taking much part in the work of the place 

 beyond being Moderator in 1844, and Examiner in 1845 for the 

 Senate House Examination. He assisted the late Mr. D. F. Gre- 



