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ing and example in wakening the public to a perception of the power and 

 beauty of science, and stimulating and guiding its pursuit. 



He was born March 7, 1 792, at Slough, a spot consecrated by the work 

 of his illustrous father ; an only child, he grew up with nothing to weaken 

 the effect of the glorious pursuits and magnificent objects with which he 

 was familiar. He was educated at home, but most successfully. He was 

 a good classical scholar, a poet, an accomplished draughtsman, an excel- 

 lent musician ; he spoke fluently several foreign languages, and was well 

 versed in their literature. In 1809 he entered St. John's College, Cam- 

 bridge, through which he passed with the highest honours, graduating as 

 Senior "Wrangler above Peacock. In conjunction with Peacock and another 

 distinguished man of the following year, Babbage, he took an active part in a 

 controversy then raging at Cambridge. From reverence to the memory of 

 Newton, from limited intercourse with the continent, and perhaps from 

 national prejudice,' British mathematicians had advanced scarcely a step 

 beyond their great master ; and it was scarcely possible for them to do so 

 while they retained the Fluxional notation. 



If we compare the treatises of Fluxions which at the time in question 

 were current in the University with the French or German text-books on 

 the same branch of analysis, we must be thoroughly ashamed, and almost 

 disposed to admit the contemptuous statement of an Edinburgh reviewer, 

 that there were in Great Britain only four men who could read the ' Me- 

 canique Celeste,' and that three of them were Scotchmen*. In all such 

 transitions, besides the effect of habit, the adherents of an old theory are 

 often bound to it by personal feelings, as if the giving up their former 

 convictions implied some intellectual inferiority ; and it may happen that 

 the champions of the new one do not bear their triumph meekly. At 

 Cambridge, however, the struggle was not long ; for Woodhouse, the ori- 

 ginator of the movement, was powerfully seconded by Herschel and his 

 friends even while undergraduates. From them came the memoirs of the 

 Analytical Society, the translation of Lacroix's f Differential and Integral 

 Calculus,' and the examples of the same calculus, which virtually decided 

 the question. The treatise on the calculus of finite differences which this 

 last volume contains, and which was the work of Herschel exclusively, is 

 specially valuable. Henceforward he entered on a wider field of labour, 

 where the limits of this notice do not permit us to follow him ; for of him 

 it may be said, as in Goldsmith's epitaph, "Scientise nullum non genus 

 tetigit, nullum quod tetigit non ornavit." For sixty years he enriched the 

 Royal and other Societies with memoirs, precious not merely for the truths 

 which they reveal, but for their suggestive character and their lucid de- 

 velopments. Their number and quality might seem great enough to over- 

 task the energy of most men, yet they were supplemented by several sepa- 



* Probably he meant by the three, himself, Brougham, and Ivory; of Ivory this 

 was true, but the competence of the other two for such a feat is very questionable. 



