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IV. 



ON THE FUNCTIOjS" OF AN ACADEMY, IN ESPECIAL OF 

 THE KOYAL IRISH ACADEMY. 



An Address delivered to the Academy, February 28, 1906. 



By ROBERT ATKINSON, LL.D., President. 



Published March 26, 1906. 



It has been the custom for the President to deliver an address to 

 the Academy during his term of office, the subject being naturally 

 some topic relevant to the Academy and its work, its theory and its 

 practice. It is a custom reasonable in itself, and not to be lightly 

 set aside by any man whom the Academy has h(moured with this 

 special mark of its confidence. 



The history of the early labours of the Academy has been set forth 

 on previous occasions by men much more competent than myself to 

 estimate and illustrate the many sides of the Academy's activity, so 

 that though, no doubt, each different President must look at the 

 subject from a different point of view, and estimate it with a 

 different standard, and from a continuously increasing amount of 

 productivity, I have not felt at liberty to re-handle this theme; and 

 in searching for a subject on which I might hope to interest our 

 members, I have thought that the time is not unsuitable for some 

 general considerations as to the office subserved by an Academy, and 

 in especial by the Royal Irish Academy. I propose, therefore, to 

 lay before you certain thoughts which have solicited my attention 

 for some time past, and which have finally crystallized into the 

 following shape. It is in no spirit of dogmatism that I put them 

 forward, but in the hope that they may prove suggestive, in however 

 slight a degree, and in the belief that you Avill listen to them 

 sympathetically, as the utterances of a man who has spent most of his 

 life in close connexion with the Academy. 



