method, deficient in proof, and slipshod in language. Was it not, then, almost inevitable that they should have preferred the former? But if one has to pronounce upon the way in which the competition was started, carried on, and finally decided, we are by no means sure that O’Brien had not some reason to complain. First of all, with regard to his charge of the Academy having awarded the prize to a member of their own Council, the evidence to support it is _primâ facie_ strong. Upon turning to vol. xvi. of the _Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy_, we find the names of “The Committee of Antiquities of the Council” for the year 1830 (that in which the competition was first invited) given as follows:--“Isaac D’Olier, LL.D.; Thomas Herbert Orpen, M.D.; Hugh Ferguson, M.D.; Sir William Betham; John D’Alton, Esq.; _George Petrie, Esq._; and the Rev. Cæsar Otway.” In the next volume of the _Transactions_, extending to 1837, the above list is given without any alteration, except that Mr. D’Alton’s name is omitted, that of the Dean of St. Patrick’s being substituted. From this the inference seems only natural that “George Petrie, Esq.,” was a member of the Council (being likewise, as we find, “antiquarian artist to the Academy”) at the time when the idea of offering a prize for an essay on the Round Towers was first started; that he continued to be a member while the competition was in progress, and was actually one when the said prize was adjudicated. Next, as to the charge that the Academy had predetermined to award the prize to a member of its own Council, we have the very compromising letter of the Rev. Mr. Otway (himself a member of the Council) to the editor of the _Dublin Penny Journal_, which is cited in the Preface to the first edition of this work,[12] coupled with those repeated postponements of the date for sending in essays, which O’Brien assures us were inexplicable on any other ground than that of giving Mr. Petrie time to finish _his_ essay. We are far from contending that the reasons adduced in support of both these charges should weigh against the high repute which the Royal Irish Academy has always enjoyed from the time of its foundation; still, it is impossible to deny that, in the absence of all satisfactory explanation,--at least so far as we have been able to discover any,--they wear a rather ugly look.