( ^iii ) 



guished by his power of giving to his researches that iDeciiliar symme- 

 try in their results, which is such an element of the beautiful in 

 science, while he possessed that catholicity of knowledge which led 

 him to help other branches of research, as well by his purse as by his 

 example. 



The next names of those now departed from us are Todd and 

 Hincks — the one, who has done so much to illustrate our Irish 

 ecclesiastical history; the other, our great Assyrian scholar and 

 successful investigator of the Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions. 



To turn now to Petrie. In a diary of his to which I have 

 had access, written when he was but nineteen years of age, 

 there are many entries which show he was even then a careful 

 observer in archseology. Hamilton, as he advanced, achieved successive 

 triumphs in pure and applied mathematics, till he raised the torch 

 which revealed paths in the future hitherto undreamed of; while that 

 in the hand of Petrie, lighting up the past, will still shine thi'ough the 

 "dark backward and abysm of time," till many of its secrets shall 

 be revealed. " He became," to quote again the words of the Bishop of 

 Limerick, "the informing spirit, the great instructor of a school of. ar- 

 chseology. He not only laid down the principles, but exemplified on 

 a great scale the application to antiquarian science of the principles, of 

 a philosophic induction." N'eed I recal his foundation of our national 

 museum, and our great library of Irish manuscrij)ts ; his admirable 

 contributions to our Proceedings and Transactions, in which so much 

 has been done to illustrate our pre-historic monuments and our early 

 military and ecclesiastical architecture. His great essay on the latter 

 subject was truly an aureum opus, as was also that on the antiquities 

 and history of Tara Hill, crescit occulto velut arlor cbvo Fama* 



The science of Archaeology, that to which Petrie mainly devoted 

 the greater part of his life, is the true basis of history, for the study of 

 antiquity is the study of man. It must be remembered that the history 



* In an interesting letter from Dr. Eeeves, whicli is given in the memoir of 

 Petrie's life, and written shortly after his death, that wise and learned antiquary- 

 gays : — " It was only a fortnight since that Mr. Jellett and I had a conversation 

 in the college courts about a successor to Dr. Graves in the Academy chair, and it 

 would have pleased you to hear, as it did me, the earnestness with which the merits 

 and claims of George Petrie were urged by the speaker, who said that he and Dr. 



