BELFAST 



NATURAL HISTORY & PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 



SESSION 1893-4. 



'.oth October^ 1893. 



Professor M. F. FitzGerald, B.A., M.I.C.E., President, in 

 the Chair. 



Rev. Dr. Stokes, M.R.I. A, Professor of Ecclesiastical History, 

 T.C.D., delivered a lecture, entitled 



"ST. PATRICK AND THE VALLEY OF THE BOYNE." 



Rev. Dr. Stokes, who was cordially received, said it had been 

 oftentimes remarked that Irishmen had been incurious about 

 their own country, about their own antiquities, about their own 

 nationality, and the thing was too true. If they wanted to 

 know how true it was, let them ask how many people in that 

 room had ever seen that most wonderful specimen of caligraphy 

 in the world, the Book of Kells, and he ventured to say that 

 the people who had seen it were very few — he could count 

 them on the fingers of both hands — and yet that wonderful 

 book lay for inspection by every visitor to the library of Trinity 

 College, Dublin. They treated such antiquities with the 

 supremest neglect, although, at the same time, the very men 

 who treated the Irish antiquities with neglect would be found 

 crowding the Royal Academy in London, or crowding the 

 museums of France and Germany. How many persons had 

 ever visited the valley of the Boyne, and crossed it, the place 

 which changed the history of Europe ? And yet Lord Macauley 



