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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 fortune, 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 Transactions 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 pre- 
sence of representatives of Royalty; eventhe 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, at least, be allowed to call himself an attached member of the 
body, under the sense, very deeply felt by him, of his own personal 
and official deficiencies. 
“ Whoever may be the member elected by your suffrages, this 
evening, to occupy that important and honourable post which [ am now 
about to resign, it will, of course, become my duty to give to that future 
President my faithful and cordial support, by any means within the 
compass of my humble power. But if it be true, as I collect it to be, 
that your unanimous choice will fall upon the very member whom, out 
of all others, I should have myself selected, if it could have been mine 
to make the selection—with whom I have been long connected by the 
closest ties of college friendship, strengthened by the earnest sympathy 
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