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found to be essential. Under the direction of Lieutenant (now Sir 

 Thomas) Larcorn, who conceived the idea of drawing together every 

 species of local information relating to Ireland, and embodying it in a 

 Memoir accompanying the Ordnance Survey Maps, Petrie was employed 

 to take charge of the topographical department, to collect all the mate- 

 rials, and superintend the persons engaged in that part of the work. 

 There, as the head of a literary staff, he had the assistance of several 

 persons who possessed a good knowledge of the Irish language, and to 

 whom he communicated his own methods of systematic inquiry, and 

 the refinement of a more extended scholarship. It was from Petrie 

 that John 0 'Donovan and Eguene Curry received the training which 

 enabled them afterwards to contribute in so many ways to that great 

 development of ancient Irish literature which we have witnessed in the 

 last quarter of a century. He became the informing spirit, the great 

 instructor, of a school of Archaeology. He not only laid down the prin- 

 ciples, but exemplified upon a great scale the application to antiquarian 

 science of the principles of a philosophic induction. Before his time, 

 Irish antiquaries had brought discredit upon their pursuits by the va- 

 riety of errors into which they fell. Some followed blindly in the wake 

 of those who had gone before them, subjecting their conclusions to no 

 examination, neglecting to gather and sift original documentary evi- 

 dence, and hardly looking at the very objects of which they professed to 

 give accounts. Others framed fanciful hypotheses, and then spent all 

 their labour in casting about for arguments by which their theories 

 might be supported. I need not go beyond the names of Vallancey and 

 Beaufort for examples of the erroneous methods to which I have alluded ; 

 and it is deeply to be lamented that the influence of their school is still 

 felt amongst us; and that with a very large number of persons it seems 

 to be a point of honour, or almost a matter of faith, to maintain the- 

 ories in which the parts really played by our Celtic progenitors are 

 assigned to Etruscans, Phoenicians, and races inhabiting regions still 

 more remote. Against such misleading tendencies Petrie had to strug- 

 gle, and he has combated them with a success which will be more fully 

 recognised as the nature of his work comes to be better understood. He 

 first showed how to make the contents of our ancient Irish MSS. avail- 

 able for the purposes of antiquarian research. He had large collections 

 made from them of passages bearing upon questions of topography, his- 

 tory, architecture, and so forth. And he took pains to satisfy himself 

 that the true meaning of these was furnished by scholars having a com- 

 petent knowledge of the Irish language. He explored almost every 

 part of Ireland himself, filling his sketch books with careful drawings 

 of ancient remains ; and it Was by means of a comparison of these with 

 one another, and with the notices of them contained in ancient docu- 

 ments, that he established general and solid conclusions respecting their 

 nature. The results of this process, especially those having a philolo- 

 gical bearing, as exhibited in the " Ordnance Survey Memoir," called 

 forth the expression of Pictet's cordial recognition of the importance of his 

 work, and of the merit of its execution. It is true thatthe literary and ec- 



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