300 The Library. There is, indeed, one observation, if only one, which may come with grace from the lips of a stranger, and could not have been made by your Lordship. You, as an Irishman, can, and do, welcome the Association to Ireland, but cannot express on its behalf the gratification which it feels in finding itself there. This, I can assure all present, is very sincere. Most of us have the most agreeable recollections of our Dublin meeting, when we enjoyed the hospitality of that nobie seat of learning, Trinity College, and which was the last public appearance of one of the most illustrious of our profession a man partly of Irish extrac- tion Henry Bradshaw. It is with no less satisfaction that we now find ourselves guests of the prosperous and public-spirited metropolis of Northern Ireland ; and great indeed would be our pleasure if we could find reason to believe that our visit would in any way tend to promote the library movement in the sister island. This is the point to which I should have pre- ferred to have chiefly addressed myself had it been possible ; but it is one in which I am to learn and not to teach. I have seen and admired the noble national library in Dublin, which, in extent, architecture, and management would do honour to any city; but how far anything like a free library movement exists in Ireland I have yet to be informed, and I see with great pleasure upon our agenda a paper on the Irish library movement in general by Mr. Dixon, and special papers on the Belfast Public Library by Mr. Elliot and Mr. Gray. I should not be surprised to understand that in most districts the movement had not yet begun to move from obvious difficulties, partly the " eternal want of pence," which, when libraries are the theme, vexes the most opulent cities of Great Britain, and which cannot but be a most formidable difficulty in a country in general by no means wealthy partly from other causes on which I had better not touch on this occasion ; nor need I, for they are visible to everybody. Certain I am that an indisposi- tion of the Irish mind to knowledge and literature is not among them. The Irishman loves knowledge, and for its acquisition needs nothing but access to literature. Men of letters, science, and art have always been held in the highest honour in this country. Without indulging in any exaggerated visions of early Irish civilisation, there undoubtedly was a time when the pictorial art, then extinct almost everywhere else, attained one of its most elegant developments in Ireland, and when Irish scholars and missionaries bore the lamp of learning into thick
