XXI. ADDRESS DELIVERED AT A MEETING OF THE ROYAL 

 IRISH ACADEMY, HELD APRIL 13TH, 1846, ON THE OCCA- 

 SION OF TAKING THE CHAIR. 



Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 1846. 



GENTLEMEN, My first my most urgent duty on this, to me 

 most solemn occasion, is to thank you for the high distinction you 

 have conferred. It would be idle to attempt to express how highly 

 I esteem the honour. The thought that I had been deemed worthy 

 to occupy the chair which has been filled by Kirwan, by Brinkley, 

 and by Hamilton, might, indeed, well nigh overwhelm me, did I 

 not know that there were other merits, more humble than theirs, 

 upon which you set a value other qualities less dazzling, which 

 may find here their employment and their use. An institution 

 such as this has been compared to the House of Solomon, in 

 Bacon's philosophical fiction, the New Atlantis, in which the in- 

 vestigation of truth is carried on by labourers of various kinds, to 

 each of which he has assigned a separate task. We have had, in 

 this Academy, the representatives of each of these classes : we, too, 

 have had our " Miners," our " Lamps," and our " Interpreters of 

 Nature." I am content to enrol myself in the lowest class ; or if, 

 by reason of the high trust which you have now reposed in me, 

 other tasks should fall to my lot, I am proud to accept a new 

 station among the intellectual workmen, and to perform the part 

 of one whose office it is to harmonize and give effect to the labours 

 of all. 



There is another personal consideration, to which I cannot 

 refrain from alluding; and yet it is one upon which I hardly 



