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to the thousands who listened to hini the means, the instruments, the 

 processes which are contained in the operation of that spirit. He told 

 them the men of science assembled there met and spoke and felt toge- 

 ther then, that they might afterwards better think and act and feel 

 alone. He told them that it is indeed the individual man who inves- 

 tigates and discovers — not any aggregate or mass of men; but, recog- 

 nising in the fullest manner the necessity for individual exertion, and 

 the ultimate connexion of every human act and human thought with 

 the personal being of man, he forcibly reminded his hearers that the 

 social feelings make up a large and powerful part of that complex and 

 multiform being. "The affections," he said, " act upon the intellect; 

 the heart, upon the head. In the very silence and solitude of its medi- 

 tations, still genius is essentially sympathetic — is sensitive to influence 

 from without, and fain would spread itself abroad, and embrace the 

 whole circle of humanity." And then he proceeded to descant upon 

 the influence which the love of fame exerts in quickening the efforts 

 and cheering the labours of the greatest intellects. The passage is 

 worthy of being referred to for its eloquence alone. But it has for us a 

 special value ; because it reveals to us something of the inmost mind 

 of Hamilton himself, and accounts for traits in his character which 

 were not understood or viewed as indulgently as they ought to have 

 been. 



A mathematician endowed with such original powers as Hamilton 

 possessed might have been excused, if, yielding to the natural tempta- 

 tion of waiting for casual inspirations, he had carried on his labours in 

 a desultory or unsystematic manner. To such temptations — and no 

 doubt he felt them— he rose superior. He was, on the contrary, re- 

 markable for the diligence and method with which he performed all 

 his work. These qualities are evidenced by the number, magnitude, 

 and importance of his published works. There was no minute care, 

 even in matters of typographical nicety, which he disdained to ex- 

 pend upon them. And in his MS. books, carefully written, and with 

 dates marking from day to day the progress of his scientific life, he re- 

 corded all his meditations, all the calculations through which he passed 

 in his apparently fruitless, as well as in his most successful, researches. 

 These volumes, many of them very large, and numbering about sixty, 

 have been deposited in the Library of Trinity College. They will supply 

 to future historians of science the most precious materials illustrating 

 the development of Hamilton's discoveries. They will exhibit, doubt- 

 less, germs of thought suggestive to others of new discoveries. They 

 record a great eommercium epistolicum — his correspondence with the 

 most distinguished scientific men of his own age. J^ay, more, they will 

 be found to contain memoirs on a variety of subjects, complete in them- 

 selves, and carefully elaborated, but which he had abstained from pub- 

 lishing, either because they were unconnected with the greater works 

 which he had in hand, or because he hoped to develope them more fully 

 at some future time. It is to be hoped that they will yet see the light, 

 and, like the posthumous memoirs of Euler, inspire us with a feeling that 



