38 
lie failed fully to develope. In fact, during his later years he re- 
minds one a little of Hooke, who was wont to rise at the conclusion 
of every memoir which he heard, and declare that he had something 
in store on the same subject. The notation, too, of some of his 
papers is a notation peculiar to himself ; and the methods employed 
are often those of a new calculus, the Calcul des Residus, invented 
by him, but not generally adopted by mathematicians. All these 
circumstances will conspire to lock up M. Cauchy’s papers for a con- 
siderable period. But no one hesitates about their value. In those 
subjects where the results of his analysis can be easily tested, such 
as in the determination of the motion of elastic media, with its ap- 
plication to the undulatory theory of light ; or in the doctrine of 
planetary disturbances as applied to the movements of the small 
planet Pallas, M. Cauchy was, and will continue to be, the received 
authority. 
No sooner had he settled at Sceaux, in the neighbourhood of Paris, 
than, for the fourth time, he commenced the publication of his 
Exercises , which he continued to the day of his death. The extra- 
ordinary amount of work thus performed by one man strikes the 
mind with astonishment. It is true that many of his papers are 
but the exhibition in type of the pages of his scribbling book. He 
had the habit during life of preserving all his loose thoughts and 
unsuccessful attempts, by working constantly on paper bound in vol- 
umes. Thus whatever he penned was sure to be preserved. We 
may perhaps be permitted to regret this circumstance, as its evident 
tendency was to present a bar to the operation of that polishing 
process which most writers find so essential to the success of their 
works. But M. Cauchy was not allowed to remain nineteen years 
in the silence of his study. On the 13th of November 1839, the 
Bureau des Longitudes called him to the place previously occupied 
by M. Prony. This was an unfortunate event. It was evident to 
all those who knew M. Cauchy that he would never consent to take 
the requisite oaths. Negotiations were accordingly at once set on 
foot by those who desired his presence amongst them, with the object 
of inducing the Government to dispense with the formality. Men 
of science of every shade of political opinion interested themselves in 
the matter ; but without success. The Government did, indeed, 
consent to reduce the oath to the merest matter of form, but an 
