351 



now to lay before you, in the briefest possible manner, a few of the 

 grounds of this award ; without attempting to offer a complete state- 

 ment of those grounds, or anything approaching to a full analysis 

 of the memoir itself, which memoir indeed will very soon ^ be in 

 your hands. 



Mr. Petrie's Essay may be considered as consisting of two prin- 

 cipal parts : the first containing an account of Events connected with 

 Tara, compiled from Irish manuscripts and illustrative of the His- 

 tory of Ireland ; and the second part being devoted to an identifica- 

 tion of the existing Remains, including an examination of the various 

 descriptive notices also contained in ancient Irish manuscripts. The 

 documents brought forward, possess a great degree of curiosity 

 and interest ; many of them, also, are now for the first time pub- 

 lished ; and (which is of importance to observe) are given in an 

 entire, unmutilated form ; accompanied with literal translations, and 

 with philological and other notes, adapted to increase their value 

 to the student of the ancient literature and history of Ireland. And 

 what gives to these hterary relics a value and an interest perhaps 

 greater than, or at least different from, what might attach to them if 

 considered merely as curious fragments, illustrative of the mode of 

 thinking and feeling in times long passed away, is the circumstance 

 that the accuracy of their topographical descriptions has been tested 

 by recent and careful examination. The resources of the Ordnance 

 Survey have been called in, to check or to confirm, by appeal to exist- 

 ing vestiges, the statements still preserved of the writers of former 

 centuries, respecting the rehcs of what was even then an ancient and 

 almost forgotten greatness ; the time-worn traces have been mea- 

 sured, and compared with those old descriptions ; and an agreement 

 has been found, which establishes as well the truly wonderful anti- 

 quity of the remains still to be found at Tara, on what was once, and 

 for so many centuries, the royal hill of Ireland, as the correctness 

 and authenticity of documents, which it has been little the fashion 

 to esteem. 



It is this clear estabhshment of the authenticity of what had been 

 commonly thought doubtful, this employment of a manifestly rigorous 

 method of inquiry in what had seemed to many persons a region of 

 fancy and of fable, in a word this evident approach to the character 

 of scientific proof, which has made (I own) a stronger impression on 



