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PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 
‘‘May it please yotjr Excellency, —In my own name as President, 
and in that of the Council and Members of the Eoyal Irish Academy 
who accompany me, I have solicited this interview with your Excellency, 
for the purpose of presenting to you our respectful congratulations on 
your arrival in Dublin, to occupy for the second time the high and re¬ 
sponsible office of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Your Excellency’s former 
residence amongst us has made you acquainted with the literary and 
scientific institutions of this city; and it is therefore unnecessary for us 
to inform you that the Eoyal Irish Academy has been incorporated, and 
has laboured for more than seventy years, to promote the study of sci¬ 
ence, lelles lettres , and the antiquities of Ireland. We trust that we are 
not guilty of any presumption when we express our conviction that the 
institution of this Academy has been eminently useful to Ireland. It 
has fostered and rewarded the pursuit of science and sound learning; it 
has brought together on a common ground men who have differed widely 
on political and religious questions, and the meetings of the Academy 
have ever exhibited that mutual forbearance and good will which are 
necessary for the calm discussion of scientific questions, and morally so 
desirable in this country. We have established, principally from the 
private contributions of our members and the liberality of individual 
donors, a Museum of Irish Antiquities, which has now acquired some 
reputation as illustrating the manners and customs of the nations that 
formed one of the great waves of migration of the human race. We have 
recently published a Descriptive Catalogue of one of the departments of 
this Museum, with a view to make its contents known to the learned of 
Great Britain and of Europe, and the immediate completion of the work is 
only delayed by the limited funds at our disposal. We have formed also 
a Library, to which her Majesty’s Government has lately made some 
very valuable donations, by giving us the topographical and antiquarian 
materials collected for the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, and more recently 
some duplicate volumes of very useful newspapers and important Parlia¬ 
mentary papers removed from the Irish Office in London. Our Library 
consists chiefly of the transactions of sister scientific Academies—British 
and foreign—and of such books and manuscripts as relate particularly 
to the history, the literature, and the antiquities of Ireland. All Members 
can borrow books from our Library, and it is open, with necessary restric¬ 
tions, to all who are properly introduced. Ey our Charter your Excel¬ 
lency is appointed, ex officio , the Visitor of the Eoyal Irish Academy, and 
we trust you will find leisure from your more important and higher 
duties to relax occasionally by doing us the honour of attending some of 
our meetings, and examining the remains of ancient Irish art and litera¬ 
ture which are preserved in our Museum and Library. We beg to ex¬ 
press our anxious hope that the period of your Excellency’s administration 
in Ireland may prove an era distinguished by the promotion of peace and 
prosperity, the development of the industrial resources of the country, 
and the advancement of those literary and scientific pursuits to which 
the Eoyal Irish Academy is more especially devoted.” 
Ills Excellency returned the following reply :—- 
