Beauties and Antiquities of Ireland: Being a Tourist's Guide to Its Most Beautiful Scenery & an Archæologist's Manual for Its Most Interesting RuinsRussell, Thomas O'Neill
History
Beauties and Antiquities of Ireland: Being a Tourist's Guide to Its Most Beautiful Scenery & an Archæologist's Manual for Its Most Interesting Ruins
Russell, Thomas O'Neill
Ireland -- Antiquities; Ireland -- Description and travel
Some may think that this statement is not true. They may point to the
enormous collection of antiquities in the museum in Naples. It is,
however, hardly fair to class the treasures of that museum with the
objects found in Ireland. It was the accidental calamity that befel
Herculaneum and Pompeii that stocked the museum in Naples. If that
calamity had not happened, it is all but certain that not a single object
in the Neapolitan museum would now be extant. It was by no accidental
calamity that the enormous number of Irish antique objects were brought to
light. They were found from time to time all over the country. There are
many private collections in the hands of private individuals in almost all
the large towns in Ireland, and a very large percentage of the bronze
objects in the British Museum were found in Ireland. No other country of
its size has yielded so many objects of a far-back antiquity. It seems a
pity that those who have so many private collections of antique objects in
so many parts of Ireland do not send them all to the Royal Irish Academy;
but if they are to lie there, stowed away in drawers in a back room, they
might better remain in the hands of private collectors. If there was a
real national press in Ireland, there would be such widespread indignation
awakened at the way Irish antiquities have been treated since they were
removed to the Museum in Kildare Street that those who manage it would be
_forced_ to treat one of the finest collections of its kind in the world
in a very different manner. Hardly a word has appeared in the Dublin press
protesting against the way the department of Irish antiquities has been
managed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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