ee . 
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 literary 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 relics 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 establishment 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 
