192 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 
arisen from an improvident allocation of a part of the ground at the 
disposal of the Department, which could not be made to yield the 
extent of area required, save by the sacrifice, more or less, of equally 
requisite light. If the matter be re-opened, I earnestly hope that 
the Lord President of the Council, who is also, in his Excellency’s 
exalted capacity of Viceroy, our Visitor, will see that your Council 
and the Board of Visitors, on which Sir Robert Kane and the Provost 
of Trinity College, with myself, represent you, shall have an oppor- 
tunity of stating their views, to be considered by the Department 
before giving their next instructions for the guidance of the Architect. 
We desire that the new Museum may be entirely successful. We 
wish well to all the operations of the Department, and welcome its 
officers amongst us. The presence of a number of gentlemen of the 
ability and accomplishment adequate to imparting knowledge so varied 
and valuable is a solid advantage both to the Academy and to the 
Royal Dublin Society ; and it needs but the observance of that consi- 
deration due by public servants to Public Bodies, to ensure a co-ope- 
ration from us not only sincere but cordial 
Not very many years ago, a glance at the progress of Science 
within the Academy, and a statement of our position as regards our 
antiquarian Collections, would have nearly exhausted all that a Pre- 
sidential 4 ddress, not aiming at anything beyond our immediate affairs 
and prospects, could properly bring before you. For Polite Literature 
did not, by any means, at that time, occupy the large space it now 
does in our Proceedings. After the time of Dr. Todd, imdeed, the 
work of carrying forward a purely literary and scholastic exploration 
of Irish historical and antiquarian sources devolved mainly on one 
man, who has been to us at once our Camden and our Usher—it is no 
disparagement to either great name to make the application. The 
Academy will readily understand that I speak of the Very Rev. Dr. 
William Reeves. in his contributions to Irish learning in our Zrans- 
actions we have, laid up for the delight and instruction of scholars, 
an immense store of information, solid, accurate, scrupulously vouched, 
all conveyed with a grace and engaging directness unsurpassed by 
any other cultivator of those fields of knowledge, here or elsewhere. 
But the growth of philological study, and the labours of Zeuss in col- 
lecting from the Irish material of the Continental libraries the ele- 
ments of a vocabulary and grammar of the ancient language, had given 
a new value to our old Irish Books and a corresponding stimulus to 
Academic enterprise. For I cannot employ a better word in describing 
the immense labour about that time entered on by the Council, in 
commencing the transcription in fac semile of our most ancient Irish 
manuscripts, and so placing them at once at the disposal of Conti- 
nental scholars. So great and so successful has our progress been in 
this vast work, that Mr. Gilbert, its most active originator, may justly 
be awarded a large share of the honour and thanks due to your Council 
and to the successive Committees by whom the transcription has been 
carried forward. Our Scribe, the last of an hereditary class, lived to 
