575 



"I am aware that there are still in this Academy, as there 

 have been, no doubt, from its foundation, men of distinguished 

 learning and celebrity in their own pursuits, who will not sym- 

 pathize in the opinions and objects which 1 and others have so 

 ardently endeavoured to uphold ; and that there are others, 

 not less eminent, who, without going so far as ta express hos- 

 tility to these objects, maintain that the formation of an anti- 

 quarian museum and a library of the ancient literature of the 

 country should never have been attempted or be continued 

 by a body so poor as the Academy unfortunately is. But it 

 should be remembered that it is not usually the rich men or 

 the rich institutions that effect the most useful and noble 

 objects, and that there is a poverty of the mind which is more 

 fatal to the success of difficult undertakings than even that of 

 the purse. And it appears to me that, with such small pecu- 

 niary means at our disposal, we who have formed such a col- 

 lection of our ancient literary remains, and still more, who in 

 our national museum have done that which has not yet been 

 attempted in wealthy England, have given a striking evidence 

 of this fact. 



'• And I would ask of those who still are of opinion that 

 the carrying out of these objects is of no value to the country, 

 is it of no value that in a country long torn by faction and 

 prejudice, and apparently lapsing year by year into deeper 

 barbarism, we have attracted into our body, by the cultivation 

 of these pursuits, the intelligent and sober-minded of all shades 

 of opinion, and made them known to and esteemed by each 

 other ? — that, in a country without a national literature, and 

 in which the history of the past was only referred to through 

 a distorted medium to serve the purposes of faction, the culti- 

 vation of these pursuits has led to a true knowledge of our 

 history, never again to be thus perverted ? Is it of no value 

 that our collections, literary and monumental, and the uses 

 made of them, have raised us in the esteem of those in the 

 more fortunate portions of the empire, and have made the 



