416 Proceedings of the Royal Iriah Academy. 



of Marsh's Library, composed of such materials, are largely eccle- 

 siastical and historical ; but they are by no means exclusirely so. 

 Ecclesiastics are physicians for the soul ; but in ancient and modem 

 times alike, they liave magnified their office and loved to be physicians 

 for the body as "svell ; and, in consequence, there is no place "vrhere you 

 are so sure of curious " finds" in the region of ancient medicine as in 

 these old ecclesiastical libraries of the seventeenth centiuy ; and not 

 in medicine merely, but also in law, ecclesiastical and civil, botany, 

 poetry, music, and various other directions which modern physicians 

 will maintain, come more legitimately under a clergyman's cognizance. 

 Some time ago I had an American oculist in the libraiy, and I 

 presented him with a treatise on diseases of the eye dating from the 

 days of King Charles I. He looked over it with great interest, and 

 assured me that there were several remedies aud drugs there mentioned 

 which are now used as the very latest ideas by American practitioners. 

 While again, if the Bombay Government would only communicate 

 with me, I could easily send them notes fi'om several works giving 

 them the concentrated experience of the physicians of England, France, 

 tSpain, and Italy, concerning the plague in the days of Charles II. 



The poet, however, tells us that "our little systems have their 

 day " ; and so it was with " Marsh." 



It had its day more than half a century ago, and then sei-ved its 

 generation well as a public library ; but it has been cut out by other 

 pubKc libraries, which have since sprung into existence and are more 

 accessible, while the mother of all the really public libraries in Dublin 

 has been left stranded up under the cathedral shadow, and stranded 

 so completely that I found on my appointment as its " keeper" that 

 the number of visitors and readers for the previous twelve months had 

 been exactly two. ^ "Well, we are better now. The learned treasurer 

 of this Academy and even some stray members of the Council, at times 

 appear there, and prove the magnitude of the resources of which I 

 have spoken. The vrise man, however, assures us that God has made 

 all things double, one against another, and that He has made nothing 

 unequal ; and so it has been with " Marsh's." 



proved by the motto ■which he inscribed in all liis books, iravraxfi rrjv 'Ax-fideiav. 

 It is very useful to young students, because it marks all the quantities both of 

 proper names and of ordinary -words. 



' Perhaps nothingwill show the depth of ignorance prevalent still about " Marsh," 

 as the fact told me by several persons of late that the very police who live next door 

 to the library in the ancient Archiepiscopal Palace have assured inquirers that they 

 did not know where it was, and had never heard of it. The constables who said so 

 must have been comparatively young members of the force. 



