Once it was broken into eight pieces, but was so cleverly mended that it is almost impossible to detect this as it stands, with other heirlooms, looking down on the china and glass of later dates. FAIRLEIGH COTTAGE. THE FIELD, SCOPE AND OPPORTUNITY OF THE AMERICAN-IRISH HISTORICAL SOCIETY. BY DENNIS HARVEY SHEAHAN,[56] PROVIDENCE, R. I. The history of a country is dear to the heart of the lover of that country. By the aid of historical study we learn of the origin, growth and development of a race of people; their customs, religions, laws, governments; their accomplishments and what they have contributed to the economy of the world. The historian points out the past to the present and future. He puts aside the veil that has gathered about the dim past, opens up to the gaze of the bright present the panorama of human achievement, and blazes the way for his successor in the rosy future. What the clergyman learns from the theological disputations of the past, the poring monk has gathered together; what the physician now acquires with comparative ease is furnished him by the knowledge garnered from the experience of his brethren from the time when man learned that pain and aches affected his being; what the lawyer gains from precedents is a guiding light which sheds its rays upon problems of jurisprudence that the legal lore of the past generations has taken from the leaves of experience; what formulæ the scientist is able to demonstrate, he owes to the observations of men who, through the ages, have chronicled the phenomena of nature; the statesman is able to meet the crisis of the present by being informed as to other crises in governmental affairs. The citizen of a republic who neglects to learn the fundamental principles upon which rest the laws of the land; who does not know how the country was developed and maintained is as a blind man and not able to bring to the exercise of his suffrage the amount of intelligence that the country has a right to require from him. This obligation comes to us in a twofold capacity. We, as citizens of this great republic, should study the history of our country from a patriotic standpoint, while as Irishmen, or descendants of Irishmen, it should be not only a duty, but a pleasure, to learn of the deeds of the Irish in America. Therefore, an organization such as the American-Irish Historical Society, if it had no other _raison d’être_, would accomplish a patriotic purpose if it served only as an incentive to the study of the deeds of Irishmen and their descendants in America. It has become almost a maxim in historical matters, that the history of events cannot be accepted as facts until the generation which lived at the time said events occurred has passed away.