52 Proceedings of the lloi/dl Irish Academy. 



^N'ext to that of History, perhaps, is the power of Antiquarian re- 

 search, which strongly attracts all men, and which should be guided 

 by the same conditions, viz. that it be permeated with humanity, 

 that it have a high aim, and be based on wide, accurate, and critical 

 judgment. 



And here it may be well to point out the importance of an exten- 

 sive acquaintance with the foreign literature of antiquarian subjects. 

 There are not many topics of real antiquarian interest that have not 

 received some handling in foreign journals or treatises. Many of these 

 have not been translated, so that an antiquarian student, to be fully 

 furnished for his task, would require to be master of half a dozen 

 languages, at least as far as their antiquarian vocabulary extends, 

 including Latin, French, German, and the Scandinavian languages, 

 without which knowledge, antiquarian study is almost necessarily 

 limited to the sphere of merely local records. 



There is a danger to which antiquarian study is liable, viz. — 

 of looking upon its objects as of value in themselves perhaps 

 even as much as in their relations to man, of contentedly regarding 

 the external notice of the object as constituting an end in itself. 

 The long and continuous handling of antiquarian record is necessary 

 to make the antiquarian ; but care should be taken that the process 

 shall not also result in causing him to ignore the humanities of his 

 art. 1^0 doubt the recoil from the looser speculation of an earlier period 

 has produced this aversion from hypothetic reconstruction ; but the 

 absence of ideal treatment is never long in avenging itself. For if 

 scientific essays are denuded of imagination, there must be a loss, in 

 that the sympathy of the public is no longer with the writer, and the 

 stimulative element is lost sight of. The analysis of urns and monu- 

 ments and inscriptions may be as accurate as it pleases and can be ; 

 but unless the dry bones are revivified by a presentation in an imagina- 

 tive sketch of the incidents or times or persons commemorated in them, 

 the humanity in us is not stirred, and the study falls into the shade of 

 depreciation stigmatized under the epithet Dryasdust. 



The human interest is not to be ignored in the treatment of the 

 most competently written papers. In all treatises of this order on the 

 relics of the past, one wants to find out their relation with man, the 

 when and how of their creation and use. T listened with great 

 pleasure to the careful studies on the caves delivered last session, 

 yet with a latent feeling of regret that a more definite turn could not 

 have been given to the conclusions by a preciser view of the relation 

 of man to the caves and their history. Of course I admitted the force 



