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amongst those eminent and distinguished men who have been my pre- 
decessors in this high trust,—men who have enlarged the boundaries 
of human knowledge, furnished us with new powers of thought, and 
placed in our hands new instruments with which to penetrate still 
further into the regions of the infinite and the unknown. To such 
men I am immeasurably inferior,—but the consciousness of my in- 
feriority makes me the more deeply grateful for the unmerited dis- 
tinction you have conferred. I feel that I owe to your friendship 
what I could not lay claim to from intellectual or scientific supe- 
riority ; and it is, indeed, an hénour which the noblest and highest 
in the land might prize, to have received from such as you a proof 
so distinguished of your confidence and your esteem. 
But, however inferior to my illustrious predecessors in other 
respects, I will not admit myself to be their inferior in zeal for the 
welfare, or in anxiety to promote by every means within my power, 
the advancement and the usefulness of the Royal Irish Academy. i 
have long regarded this Academy as being one of the most impor- 
tant institutions of this country, bringing us together, as it does, 
men of different professions, of different tastes, of different intellec- 
tual pursuits, and uniting us in one society, held together by the 
common tie of promoting, each in his own department, and in ac- 
cordance with his peculiar studies, the advancement of knowledge, 
and the extension of useful learning. 
In a country circumstanced as Ireland is, torn with internal 
jealousies, and external sources of dissension; where there are but 
few rewards for scientific students, and but little encouragement to 
the pursuit of the higher and severer branches of solid learning,—it 
is not easy to overrate the importance of an institution like this 
Academy, which holds out at once rewards and distinctions to the 
successful investigator of truth;—rewards and distinctions of a 
nature the most grateful to literary men—and at the same time 
affords a common ground on which all can meet as brethren asso- 
ciated in the common pursuit of knowledge,—fulfilling that pro- 
phecy of the illustrious parent of modern science, “ Tum enim 
homines vires suas ndsse incipient, cum non eadem infiniti, sed 
alia alii preestabunt.”’ 
With this principle the immortal Bacon seems to have been most 
