310 Royal Irish Academy. 



was born in Dublin, in 1829, and displayed very early a taste for 

 historical study and investigation. In 1851, when only twenty-two 

 years of age, he wrote an essay on the Historical Literature of Ireland. 

 In 1855 we find him Hon. Secretary, along with our former 

 President, Dr. Todd, of the Irish Archaeological and Celtic Society. 

 "To the exertions of the two Secretaries it was mainly owing that that 

 Society was, for many years, able to continue its publication of various 

 works of the utmost importance in the history of Ireland" {Br. Graves). 

 His well-known and standard work on the History of the City of 

 Dublin was commenced in The Irish Quarterly Review in 1852. It 

 was afterwards brought out in a greatly enlarged form in 3 vols., 8vo, 

 during the years 1854-59. He joined the Academy in 1855, and was 

 elected on the Council thereof in March, 1856. In consequence of 

 his extensive knowledge of books and of Irish literature, he was 

 appointed to the Librarianship of the Academy, which office he filled 

 for thirty-five years, until his death. The Academy marked its high 

 sense of the value of his History of the City of Dublin, by awarding 

 him, in consequence of that work, its Cunningham Gold Medal in 

 1862. In 1867 he was appointed Secretary of the Public Record 

 Office, without his having been already in any public employment — 

 a sign of the estimation in which he was held by the Irish Govern- 

 ment of the day. He held that office until the abolition of it, in 

 1875. As custodian of the Academy's ancient Irish MSS., his atten- 

 tion was drawn to the desirability of reproducing and publishing the 

 most valuable of them ; and it was at his suggestion, in 1869, that the 

 Council of the Academy began the work with the publication of the 

 oldest of them, the leabhar na h-Uidhre, under his editorship. In 

 1892, the Eoyal University of Ireland, to show their appreciation of 

 his services to Irish historical literature, admitted him to the degree 

 of LL.D., honoris causa ; and in 1897, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland 

 conferred upon him the honour of Elnighthood. His paper, read to 

 the Academy in June, 1896, "Notes on Irish Bibliography'' — 

 Notices on Books by Irish writers, or in connexion with Ireland 

 printed before a.d. 1600, was continued in June, 1897, by Notes on 

 similar books printed in the seventeenth century ; but this valuable 

 work, as it doubtless would have been, was left unfinislied at the 

 author's death ; it is, however, preserved for consultation in the MSS. 

 room. 



