The subject of my paper has been already most advantageously introduced to you by the precious broadside of William de Machlinia, exhibited yesterday by Lord Charles Bruce; which, but for photography enlisted in the cause of scholarship, few of us would ever have beheld. It is equally commended by the pithy remark which fell from Mr. Bradshaw, "The best description of a book is the book itself." It is, nevertheless, my desire to bring under your notice the advantage of annexing a photographic department to national libraries or other similar institutions of first-class importance, as an integral portion of the institution. The significance of the proposal consists in the last clause. At the present moment any public library can have almost anything it wishes photographed by paying for it, and so can any private individual. But private individuals do not fill their houses with photographic reproductions of nature and art; and in comparison with the enormous results which might be obtained, public libraries, and, indeed, public institutions of any kind, have as yet hardly made more use of the potent agent which science has put into their hands than the Coreans, of whom Mr. Bullen has told us, made of the invention of movable type. Sure as I am of an indulgent audience, I shall perhaps yet more powerfully bespeak your attention if I tell you that the special cause which has determined me to bring this question forward at Dublin is a recent occurrence particularly interesting to Ireland—the transfer, by direction of the Government, of the Irish portion of the Ashburnham MSS. from the British Museum to the Royal Irish Academy. I am not here to protest against this decision. I accept it as an accomplished fact: and may sincerely profess that, so far as the interests of Celtic scholars in Ireland are promoted, I am glad of it. But on the same principle I must condole with the Celtic scholars in England, many of them Irishmen, who must, at least until the distant period when Mr. Gilbert's truly national undertaking is complete, repair to Dublin to consult what they might have seen in London. The point to be insisted upon is, that if the Museum had possessed a photographic department, the question whose interests were to be sacrificed could not have arisen at all. Though, as recently pointed out by Dr. Hessels, the photograph may not be absolutely unerring in the reproduction of minute facsimile, if made with due care it is practically adequate in the vast majority of instances. We have just heard the Dean of Armagh's testimony to the accuracy as well as the beauty of the facsimiles of ancient Irish MSS. made under the direction of Mr. Gilbert. The photographic reproduction is sometimes even preferable to the original manuscript, bringing out and restoring faded letters. Given such a facsimile, and, save as a matter of sentiment, it would be almost indifferent whether the original reposed upon the shelves of London or of Dublin. With it, the scholar