That opportunity soon came. In December 1830, the Royal Irish Academy offered the prize of a gold medal and fifty pounds to “the author of an approved essay on the Round Towers, in which it is expected that the characteristic architectural peculiarities belonging to all those ancient buildings now existing shall be noticed, and the uncertainty in which their origin and uses are involved be satisfactorily removed.” Unfortunately, the advertisement of this offer escaped O’Brien’s notice, and he did not join in the competition which it evoked. But on the 21st February 1832 the advertisement was repeated, and this time it caught his attention. It declared that none of the essays which had been sent in “satisfied the conditions of the question,” and extended the period of competition for another three months (_i.e._ until 1st June 1832), in the alleged hope “of receiving other essays on said subject,” and also for allowing the authors of the essays already sent in “to enlarge and improve them.” Considering the task that was set, new competitors were thus placed at a singular disadvantage--being expected to do in three months what the others had been unable to accomplish in two years. With all due respect to the Royal Irish Academy, it is difficult to believe that its members can have fully realised the nature of their own conditions. There still exist some scores of round towers in a more or less perfect state; and they are scattered all over Ireland, being situated for the most part in remote and not easily accessible places. The work of visiting and inspecting these--which was, surely, a necessary preliminary to describing “the characteristic architectural peculiarities belonging to all”--would require much time, after which candidates must apply themselves to the by no means trifling task of dispelling “the uncertainty in which their origin and use are involved,” and all within three short months.[7] O’Brien was not, however, to be deterred by considerations of time or space when confronted with such a chance of winning deathless fame. Besides, he was, in one respect at any rate, well equipped for the enterprise, having already made up his mind as to the “origin and uses” of the Round Towers. That he had examined them all is not to be supposed, nor is it at all likely that at his age he could have possessed sufficient technical knowledge of architecture, in its historical and scientific aspects, to profit much by their inspection. Still, he was probably acquainted with whatever had been written on that branch of the subject, and had actually made an examination of some towers, which would give him a fair general idea of the whole. Moreover, he had a formidable quantity of Eastern learning to fall back upon, in which latter respect he would have enjoyed an immense advantage over all other possible competitors, if his judges had only been qualified to appreciate that learning as it deserved. Be his equipment for the enterprise what it might, the