PREFACE. 



JL HE work, of which the first volume is now submitted to the Public, was 

 originally written for, and presented to the Royal Irish Academy, as an Essay 

 on the Origin and Uses of the Round Towers of Ireland ; and that Essay was 

 so fortunate as to obtain a gold medal and prize of fifty pounds from the 

 Academy in 1833. It may, however, be proper to state that, in its present 

 form, the work contains not only the original Essay on the Round Towers, very 

 much enlarged, but also distinct Essays on our ancient stone churches and other 

 ecclesiastical buildings, of cotemporaneous age with the Round Towers, now 

 first submitted to the Academy, and for the approval of which that distin- 

 guished body is in no way committed. For this amplification of my original 

 Essay into a work of great national scope, I am alone answerable ; and what- 

 ever may be the faults found with its execution, I trust the Academy and the 

 Public generally will give me credit, at least, for the motives which influenced 

 me in thus extending the field of my inquiries, and believe that I was actuated 

 solely to undertake this additional labour by an ardent desire to rescue the 

 antiquities of my native country from unmerited oblivion, and give them their 

 just place among those of the old Christian nations of Europe. Let me add 

 too, that I was further influenced in extending this work by the hope that by 

 making the age and historical interest of these memorials of our early Chris- 



