Bartholomew Lloyd died in 1837.  He had been the Provost of Trinity College, and the President of the Royal Irish Academy.  Three candidates were put forward by their respective friends for the vacant Presidency.  One was Humphrey Lloyd, the son of the late Provost, and the two others were Hamilton and Archbishop Whately.  Lloyd from the first urged strongly the claims of Hamilton, and deprecated the putting forward of his own name.  Hamilton in like manner desired to withdraw in favour of Lloyd.  The wish was strongly felt by many of the Fellows of the College that Lloyd should be elected, in consequence of his having a more intimate association with collegiate life than Hamilton; while his scientific eminence was world-wide.  The election ultimately gave Hamilton a considerable majority over Lloyd, behind whom the Archbishop followed at a considerable distance.  All concluded happily, for both Lloyd and the Archbishop expressed, and no doubt felt, the pre-eminent claims of Hamilton, and both of them cordially accepted the office of a Vice-President, to which, according to the constitution of the Academy, it is the privilege of the incoming President to nominate.

In another chapter I have mentioned as a memorable episode in astronomical history, that Sir J. Herschel went for a prolonged sojourn to the Cape of Good Hope, for the purpose of submitting the southern skies to the same scrutiny with the great telescope that his father had given to the northern skies.  The occasion of Herschel’s return after the brilliant success of his enterprise, was celebrated by a banquet.  On June 15th, 1838, Hamilton was assigned the high honour of proposing the health of Herschel.  This banquet is otherwise memorable in Hamilton’s career as being one of the two occasions in which he was in the company of his intimate friend De Morgan.

In the year 1838 a scheme was adopted by the Royal Irish Academy for the award of medals to the authors of papers which appeared to possess exceptionally high merit.  At the institution of the medal two papers were named in competition for the prize.  One was Hamilton’s “Memoir on Algebra, as the Science of Pure Time.”  The other was Macullagh’s paper on the “Laws of Crystalline Reflection and Refraction.”  Hamilton expresses his gratification that, mainly in consequence of his own exertions, he succeeded in having the medal awarded to Macullagh rather than to himself.  Indeed, it would almost appear as if Hamilton had procured a letter from Sir J. Herschel, which indicated the importance of Macullagh’s memoir in such a way as to decide the issue.  It then became Hamilton’s duty to award the medal from the chair, and to deliver an address in which he expressed his own sense of the excellence of Macullagh’s scientific work.  It is the more necessary to allude to these points, because in the whole of his scientific career it would seem that Macullagh was the only man with whom Hamilton had ever even an approach to a dispute about priority.  The incident referred to took place in connection with the discovery of conical refraction, the fame of which Macullagh made a preposterous attempt to wrest from Hamilton.  This is evidently alluded to in Hamilton’s letter to the Marquis of Northampton, dated June 28th, 1838, in which we read:—­