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on that office from which I am now about to retire, it humbles me to 

 reflect how far short I have come of realizing my own ideal ; but it 

 cheers me to remember how greatly beyond what I could then have 

 ventured to anticipate, the Academy itself has flourished. Of this result 

 I may speak with little fear, because little is attributable to myself. 

 Gladly do I acknowledge that it has been my good fortune, rather than 

 my merit, to have presided over your body during a period in which, 

 through the exertions of others much more than through my own 

 (though mine, too, have not been withheld), the Academy is generally 

 felt to have prospered in all its departments. The original papers 

 which have been read; the volumes of Transactions which have been 

 published ; the closer communication which has been established with 

 kindred societies of our own and of foreign countries ; the enhanced 

 value of our Library and Museum, which have been, at least, as much 

 enriched in the quality as in the quantity of their contents; the improved 

 state (as it is represented to me) of our finances, combined with an 

 increased strength of our claims on public and parliamentary support; 

 the heightened interest of members and visiters in our meetings, which 

 have been honoured on four occasions, during my presidency, by the pre- 

 sence of representatives of Royalty; even the convenience and appropriate 

 adornment of the rooms in which we assemble; — all these are things, and 

 others might be named, in which, however small may have been the 

 share of him who now addresses you, the progress of the Academy has 

 not been small, and of which the recollection tends to console one who 

 may, at least, be allowed to call himself an attached member of the 

 body, under the sense, very deeply felt by him, of his own personal 

 and official deficiencies. 



" Whoever may be the member elected by your suffrages, this 

 evening, to occupy that important and honourable post which I am now 

 about to resign, it will, of course, become my duty to give to that future 

 President my faithful and cordial support, by any means within the 

 compass of my humble power. But if it be true, as I collect it to be, 

 that your unanimous choice will fall upon the very member whom, out 

 of all others, I should have myself selected, if it could have been mine 

 to make the selection — with whom I have been long connected by the 

 closest ties of college friendship, strengthiened by the earnest sympathy 



