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said it would be impossible for any one to speak too highly of 

 the value of the immense collection of antiquities presented 

 that evening to the Academy by the Commissioners of Public 

 Works. By this valuable donation they had acquired a great 

 number of specimens quite new to their Museum ; and those 

 not new were, in many instances, more perfect than what they 

 already possessed. In fact it was realizing a vision which he 

 had formed in his mind many years ago — that Ireland might 

 yet be the depository of the finest collection of Celtic and me- 

 diaeval remains of any country in the world — and after that 

 night he could scarcely entertain a doubt, there being now 

 only one European collection which could compete with theirs, 

 that his vision would shortly be realized. He might mention 

 one fact with regard to the large number of iron articles pre- 

 sented on that as well as on former occasions, — that until within 

 a few years back there never had been preserved in any col- 

 lection an iron antique of any kind. Nothing was known with 

 respect to their age ; and the antiquarians of those days, though 

 they attached great importance to objects of bronze, gold, and 

 silver, treated iron with contempt ; the result was, that they 

 could learn nothing whatever of the state of society, so far as 

 weapons were concerned, when the use of bronze was discon- 

 tinued. A discovery, not sufficiently appreciated at the time, 

 in one of the Crannoge islands, in the county of Meath, was 

 the first circumstance which gave them a notion of the value 

 of these things. The iron articles found at Dunshaughlin be- 

 ing associated with ornamented antiques, of which the age had 

 been previously ascertained, at once supplied them with a clue 

 to their own antiquity, and the conclusion then formed had 

 since been fully borne out by the collections forwarded by the 

 Shannon Commissioners. For a long period, a sword in his 

 own collection was the only iron article preserved in any Irish 

 museum ; and on one occasion, when he added to it an iron 

 hatchet which he believed ancient, he was induced to with- 

 draw it by the ridicule it created, and the article was ultimately 



