Minutes of Proceedings. 325 



I have done but little towards the scientific or literary work of the 

 Academy. My intellectual activity, such as it has been, has lain 

 for the most part in other fields. But I have done a good deal of 

 ministerial work for the Academy. I have been for a long time, and 

 am still, indeed, a Member of the Council, and was also Secretary of 

 the Council, and in that way saw a good deal of, and took a good 

 part in, the proceedings of the Academy ; and this I will say, that 

 on my part loyalty to its interests and earnest effort on its behalf 

 have never been wanting. But, turning from myself to the larger 

 subject which- his Excellency has raised, the history of the Academy 

 in the last hundred years — the first century of its chartered existence 

 — I will follow his Excellency in remarking that there are times in 

 the history of institutions, as of individuals, when it is well to pause, 

 to look back on the past, and, enlightened by experience, to look 

 forward to the future. Such a period has now arrived in the history 

 of the Academy; and it would certainly be profitable to take a complete 

 survey of what it has already done, and what work seems to await it 

 in the future. But such a task would be far beyond my powers, and 

 would, perhaps, be better suited to a special seance of our body than to 

 a festive meeting like this. I shall not seek to do more than to notice 

 a few particular points of interest which the history of the Academy 

 offers. There are two things noteworthy about the origin of the 

 Academy — namely, the immediate source from which it took its rise, 

 and the time when it came into existence. The germ from which it 

 was develoi:)ed was a private association formed in Trinity College for 

 friendly discussion. So large a part had the College in its foundation 

 that of the twenty-one original Members of the Council, nine were 

 Fellows of Trinity College. This is interesting as iu some degree pro- 

 phetic of the fact that Trinity College has been all through the most 

 effective auxiliary of the Academy, or rather, perhaps, I should say 

 the two have been most valuable mutual auxiliaries. And long, I 

 pray, may this relation continue to subsist. The time at which the 

 Academy was founded was a hopeful and expansive one — the public 

 aspirations were high, and the national feeling had been strongly ex- 

 cited. The spirit of the time was well represented in Lord Charlemont, 

 who was the first President of the Academy. The Irish aristocracy of 

 tlie period have been, I think, rather hardly treated by some historians 

 and politicians. Whatever may have been the radical unsoundness of 



