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historical truth may ultimately be found enshrined in these tra- 
ditions; the labours of the great philologers of Germany have 
already established, beyond all doubt, that affinities exist between 
the language of the Celt and the ancient Sanscrit of Hindoostan ; 
and this discovery throws a ray of probability upon the curious 
tradition of our Irish bards, hitherto regarded asa pure fiction, that 
the Milesian ancestors of the Gaedhil, in a remote antiquity, had 
passed through India. Perhaps the science of Chemistry might be 
found to aid in this ethnological inquiry, by analyzing the gold of 
our ancient torques and fibula. I know not how far a knowledge 
of the particular alloy employed in their manufacture, would be 
found to lead to an estimate of their antiquity, or to a conjecture as 
to the country from which they came. But there is another inves- 
tigation calculated to elucidate this subject, to which geographers and 
travellers might contribute. The sepulchral monuments peculiar to 
the Celtic tribes, for which some modern antiquaries have invented 
the name of cromlech,—the cistvaens, maenvirs or stone pillars, 
cairns, and mounds,—all these are found in India, but exist in the 
greatest number in the countries which were the ultimate resting- 
places of the Celtic race, Ireland, Wales, Armorica or Brittany, 
North Britain, and the smaller islands of the Irish and British Seas. 
If the positions of all these monuments along the coasts of Europe 
and Scandinavia, through the great continent of Asia, and so on to 
India, were accurately known and mapped down, we would have at 
once, perhaps, the course of that great migration which peopled these 
countries in the remote ages of which these very monuments are the 
only historical record that now remains to us. 
To return, however, from this digression. The progress of civi- 
lized man in every branch of human knowledge, during the last 
seventy years, the period in which this Academy has flourished, 
has been most rapid and extraordinary. 
I. In Science, theoretical as well as practical, I need not tell you 
what brilliant discoveries and important inventions immortalize 
the first half of the nineteenth century. It is not, perhaps, toomuch 
to say, that in that short period mankind has done more, and made 
more real progress, than in the thousand years that preceded it. 
The steam-engine and the electric telegraph alone are practical 
