Royal Irish Academy. 237 



retire this evening from the Chair to which, in 1837, your kindness 

 called me, on the still lamented event of the death of my distin- 

 guished predecessor, the late admirable Dr. Lloyd, and in which 

 your continuing confidence has since replaced me on eight successive 

 occasions, yet a few parting words from me may be allowed, perhaps 

 expected ; and I should wish to offer them, were it only to guard 

 against the possibility of any one's supposing that I look upon my 

 thus retiring from your Chair as a step unimportant to myself, or as 

 one which might be taken by me with indifference, or without de- 

 liberation. It was under no hasty impulse that I resolved to retire 

 from the office of your President into the ranks of your private 

 members, nor was it lightly that I determined to lay down the 

 highest honour of my life. 



" My reasons have been stated in an Address delivered in another 

 place, at a meeting of some members of your body. They are, 

 briefly, these : that after the expiration of several years, I have found 

 the duties of the office press too heavily upon my energies, indeed, 

 of late, upon my health, when combined with other duties ; and that 

 I have felt the anxieties of a concentrated responsibility — exagge- 

 rated, perhaps, by an ardent or excitable temperaments — tend more 

 to distract my thoughts from the calm pursuits of study, than I can 

 judge to be desirable or right in itself, or consistent with the full re- 

 deeming of those pledges which I may be considered to have long 

 since given, as an early Contributor to your Transactions. 



" When I look back on the aspirations with which first I entered 

 on that office from which I am now about to retire, it humbles me 

 to reflect how far short I have come of realizing my own ideal ; but 

 it cheers me to remember how greatly beyond what I could then 

 have ventured to anticipate, the Academy itself has flourished. Of 

 this result I may speak with little fear, because little is attributable 

 to myself. Gladly do I acknowledge that it has been my good for- 

 tune, rather than my merit, to have presided over your body during a 

 period in which, through the exertions of others much more than 

 through my own (though mine, too, have not been withheld), the 

 Academy is generally felt to have prospered in all its departments. 

 The original papers which have been read ; the volumes of Trans- 

 actions which have been published ; the closer communication which 

 has been established with kindred societies of our own and of foreign 

 countries ; the enhanced value of our Library and Museum, which 

 have been, at least, as much enriched in the quality as in the quantity 

 of their contents ; the improved state (as it is represented to me) of 

 our finances, combined with an increased strength of our claims on 

 public and parliamentary support; the heightened interest of members 

 and visiters in our meetings, which have been honoured on four 

 occasions, during my presidency, by the presence of representatives 

 of Royalty : even the convenience and appropriate adornment of the 

 rooms in which we assemble ; — all these are things, and others might 

 be named, in which, however small may have been the share of him 

 who now addresses you, the progress of the Academy has not been 

 small, and of which the recollection tends to console one who may, 



