4j2 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



Revolution of 1848 swept away all this obscurantism ; and from that date this 

 (Treat foundation has lived and prospered under nominal control and generous 

 support of the Crown.' 



When we look at the present state of the Koyal Irish Academy, we may 

 well be almost amazed at the strict conformity of our theory and practice 

 with the ideas that led to the creating of all the old Academies in 

 Europe. The great founders, from Prince Cesi to Leibnitz, would have 

 nothing to say against any of our methods, and would be delighted to find 

 how the plans they formed and the results they strove to attain had been at 

 least partly matured in this furthest corner of north-west Europe. We are 

 indeed broader than some of our forerunners in that we do not exclude from 

 our ranks any member of any religious order, and have indeed received from 

 such ecclesiastics great and notable help in our departments both of 

 modern science and of polite literature. I take our primary object to be 

 the publication of papers on abstruse science which cannot expect many 

 readers, and therefore owe their publicity to our patronage. But we have 

 not been idle in the department of polite literature, and there are, in our 

 various Transactions, essays which are recognized as having made a large 

 advance in their subjects, and which are prized as of permanent value. Even 

 as to the lesser object of purifying and regulating vernacidar speech, so as to 

 make it a fit vehicle for literary and scientific writing, we have paid 

 special attention to one of the languages of this country which I find it 

 difficult to classify. For if we call it the vernacular speech of the country, 

 we find ourselves in the midst of conflicting opinions — one party regarding it 

 as a dead, the other as a living language. There are still more who regard it 

 as neither the one nor the other ; and even these cannot agree, for some tell 

 us it is dying a gradual but certain death, while others affirm that it is rising 

 like a phcenix from its ashes, and bursting into new and vigorous life. 

 Fortunately our Academy has no interest in settling this dispute. For if it 

 be regarded as an ancient and important branch of the Aryan languages of 

 Europe, it comes directly within the scope of the science of Comparative 

 Philology, and the interpretation of the precious MSS. preserved by the 

 Academy affords an admirable field of research in the truest sense. But if 

 we regard it as a modern tongue which wants purifying and crystallizing by 

 soimd texts, grammar, and dictionary, not only have we in hand the most 

 elaborate lexicon of the language that has ever been attempted, but we have 

 supplied the teachers of literary Irish with a text-book which they have all 



,. ' ■'■"?® '^'" *'''^'^'' ""^ t° "iil^e a similar study of the Academy of Munioh, which was created in 

 l/o9. I am also relieved of the duty of giving the history of this our Academy, because it has 

 been admirably treated by one of my predecessors. Dr. Ingram, in his Presidential address of 1890. 



