330 
the present day to draw away young men from general classical and 
fundamental education, to a premature study of their future profes- 
sional pursuits. This must necessarily produce superficial scholar- 
ship; it must diminish the number of those who can acquire any 
scholarship at all; and I doubt whether in the end it will be found 
favourable to professional attainments and eminence. To use the 
words of Bacon—*“ Ita fit, ut, more Atalanta, de via discedant, ad 
tollendum aureum pomum, interim vero cursum interrumpant, et 
victoriam emittant e manibus.” 
But, notwithstanding the acknowledgement which truth extorts 
from us, that classical learning has never been sufficiently culti- 
vated in Ireland, the one name of James Kennupy Bartix amongst 
the Members of this Academy is enough to prove that we are not 
entirely without scholars of the highest order in this department. 
Nor has the Academy failed to add considerably to the common 
storehouse of learning, in that which may be regarded our more 
especial duty, the Language and Literature of ancient Ireland. 
The Irish Grammar of Dr. O’ Donovan, his invaluable edition of the 
Four Masters, and his other publications, have won for him an 
European reputation; and it is with great pleasure and satisfaction 
that I take this occasion of announcing to the Academy, that he 
has recently received from the Royal Academy of Sciences of Berlin 
the high and well-merited distinction of being enrolled amongst 
the Honorary Members of that learned body. 
It is to be admitted; however, that we have hitherto studied the 
ancient language of this country altogether in one aspect. We 
have studied it because it enabled us to disentomb from oblivion 
records of historical and topographical iuterest ; but we have over- 
looked its philological and ethnographical importance in the great 
family of human languages to which it belongs. Neither have we 
considered or studied, as we ought to have studied, its ancient gram- 
matical and radical forms, nor the relation in which it stands to the 
cognate dialects of Scotland, of Man, of Wales, of Brittany, of Corn- 
wall. It is from a foreigner that we have received, what ought to 
have proceeded from our own scholarship, the most complete com- 
parative Grammar of the Celtic languages that has ever been at- 
tempted since the time of Lluyd; and when our illustrious hono- 
