THE ROYAL DUBLIN SOCIETY 281 



explorer, and he commanded the Intrepid when a large 

 expedition set out in 1852 for the Polar regions, where 

 he made many remarkable sledge journeys into the in- 

 terior. Lady Franklin, not feeling certainty as to the fate 

 of her distinguished husband, Sir John Franklin, purchased 

 the yacht Fox y and gave McClintock command, with a 

 commission to search for him or any trace of his expedition, 

 when he found absolute proof of Sir John's death, and of 

 the fate of the party. In 1859, he published an account of 

 the search expedition in his Voyage of the Fox in the Arctic 

 Seas. McClintock was promoted to the rank of Admiral, 

 and saw further service in the Danish war of 1864, and in 

 the Mediterranean ; in 1879 he was appointed Commander- 

 in-Chief on the North American and West Indian Stations. 

 He lived to 1907, and a bust of him has a place in the 

 reception-room of Leinster House. 



2. William Dargan, the great Irish railway projector, 

 was born in Carlow in 1799. He was first employed in a 

 surveyor's office, and subsequently worked under Telford in 

 1820, when the Holyhead railroad was being constructed. 

 In 1834, the Dublin and Kingstown line (the first in 

 Ireland), which was made by him, was opened. The Ulster 

 Canal, said to be a " triumph of constructive ability," the 

 Dublin and Drogheda, the Great Southern and Western, 

 and the Midland Great Western, railways were all con- 

 structed by him. Dargan planned and carried out the great 

 Dublin Exhibition of 1853, his advances on behalf of which 

 are believed to have amounted to 100,000, and by which 

 he lost fully 20,000. When Queen Victoria came to visit 

 it, she honoured Mr. and Mrs. Dargan by calling on them 

 at Mount Anville, when she offered to bestow a baronetcy 

 on him, which he declined. Dargan died in 1867. A 

 bronze statue of him was erected on Leinster lawn, close 

 to the National Gallery. 



On the 24th of June 1852, the Council received a 

 letter from Mr. Dargan, who, understanding that the 

 triennial exhibition of manufactures would be held in 

 1853, wished to give it a character of more than usual 



