with one or two occasional hideous exceptions, sufficient to warn us where human conduct is concerned, never to presume. Agriculture is undergoing an immense development and improvement; and it must be the care of many of you, Gentlemen, to see that our manufacturing processes exhibit a similar progress. New schools of education-new Colleges of learning-new temples of religion-are multiplied on every side, and the general condition of the people has strikingly advanced in ease and comfort. They are better fed-they are better clothed-there is an infinitely greater proportion of shoes and stockings than when I was in Ireland last; and the new complaint of Ireland is, that there are almost too few hands to work, and too few mouths to be fed. I indeed heard lately something of new arrivals being expected in this country from America. Well, then, Gentlemen, will they be those of Irishmen returning home to till their fields again—to work their looms again—to kiss their wives and families again. If so, we will bid them heartily welcome, provided, at least, they come in some moderation. Can it be that they could come here with any hostile intention? I feel sure that the good sense, as well as the good feeling of all true-hearted Irishmen or Americans would repudiate the monstrous supposition. But we will not let such preposterous images mar our social harmony; and I would rather leave you with the bright impressions about you of successful commerce, rewarded industry, restored peace, and expanding civilization. These ideas connect themselves prominently with the town of Belfast; and the best way for me to embody them is, to ask you to drink the health of its First Magistrate-the Chairman who has so ably presided over the proceedings of the evening. I give you-"The health of the Chairman of the evening, the Mayor, and the Corporation of the Town of Belfast."

I beg to assure you that I receive with peculiar gratification the Address of the Vice-Presidents, Council, and Members of the Royal Dublin Society. The official capacity with which I have just been invested confers upon me the honourable distinction of being its President; but the interest I must feel in its prosperity and progress does not date, as you have kindly reminded me, from my latest arrival in Ireland, and is not confined to any merely formal or nominal connexion. I am aware that since my former residence in this capital the schemes and operations of your Society have received considerable modifications and enlargements; and I look forward with much interest to the opportunities which my renewed sojourn will give me of marking the various stages of growth and development which you have already attained, and attending—if I dare hardly say assisting-any onward advances which it may still be in your power to accomplish. The promotion of husbandry and other useful arts in Ireland must be objects appealing to the best sympathies, and commanding the united efforts of all her true-hearted sons. The proofs of her agricultural prowess are gathered round us at this moment, I trust, and I doubt not, to find similar symptoms of activity and success in other pursuits, which tend, through the researches of the studious and

the thoughtful, to improve the details and habits of our daily and practical life, and to promote the enjoyment and elevation of the whole body of our people. I rejoice that, in the enlarged sphere of your operations, you have not declined to associate some of the ornamental pursuits and humanizing accomplishments with the graver branches of scientific and mechanical knowledge--that the Muscum co-exists with the Laboratory, and the Garden with the Cattle Show Yard. I have a firm belief that all science and all art, all usefulness and all beauty, are formed to promote and to re-act upon each other; and I trust that in employing their united influence to the glory of our common Creator, and the good of His creatures, the Royal Dublin Society will ever hold an honourable and conspicuous position.

I trust you will not be disposed to measure the value which I set upon the objects that have brought us together this evening, or my own sense of that respectful warmth of welcome with which you have received me, by the contracted limits of the reply which I propose to address to you. But, over and above the many interesting and copious matters which have already engaged our attention this evening, I think that I have three good pleas for the utmost conciseness in my remarks. The first is, that my faculties of mind and body have hardly yet recovered their normal state of evenness after the very stormy condition of the sea which I crossed yesterday; the next is, that I have really answered so many addresses to-day that I begin to lose all discrimination respecting appropriate topics; and, thirdly and chiefly, I feel that I am, for the present, too raw in the business in hand. I have too lately on this occasion set my foot on Irish soil to enable me to take a sufficiently accurate or just view of the various matters which have engaged, so profitably and honourably, the attention of this Society, or of awarding amongst them the proper amount of comment or admiration. I may just remark, that during my last residence in Ireland, if I remember rightly, the Royal Society for the Improvement of Agriculture had not then even started into life; and most of you, Gentlemen, know best the

great advances in the science and practice of agriculture which the exertions of that Society, acting with the Royal Dublin Society, in no unfriendly spirit, have subsequently made, and are able, therefore, to perceive how much I have to learn as to what has been done in the interval, and how much reason I have to anticipate pleasures from the stridesthe gigantic strides I hope to find them--which Irish agriculture has been enabled to make. We are told, in the interesting remarks made by Lord Talbot de Malahide, that the exhibitions of live stock, which began with about a score, have already amounted to 300; so we may say of the lawn in Merrion-square,

"Tercentum nivii tondunt dumeta juvenci."

I remember thinking formerly, when I traversed large tracts of your country, seldom deficient either in the richness of its soil or beauty of its outlines, after all, that the sight, from its novelty, which most gladdened the eyes was a field of turnips. But I am sure no one could have gone through the show-yard to-day without feeling that there must indeed now be a very large portion of land devoted to the cultivation of every kind of green crop to produce such a display as is there exhibited. To say nothing of the sleek bullocks and oxen of Meath, or the elfin form of the Kerry mountaineers, I find you have been successful in adopting almost every variety of English stock-our short-horns and Devons; and among our sheep the Leicesters, South Downs, Cheviots, and Cotswolds; and although Ireland, I thought, justly prided herself on her breed of pigs, I even find that you have naturalized amongst you the Berkshire breed, and one, to my unlearned eye, bearing nearly the appearance of being marked like Zebras. And myself being engaged occasionally in breeding stock in a limited way in my own home-not at all like Mr. Charles Towneley-not having the victorious propensities, I feel I should shrink from competition with what I saw to-day, as I should be sorry to expose the Viceregal dignity to such a humiliating discomfiture. Besides the interesting topic of agriculture, which occupies so much attention in this country, we have had our attention called to-night by the very able and elaborate statement of the services this Society has rendered to Ireland; and, no doubt, it was highly creditable to find how early it was in the field for the protection of ornamental art, and that now it was girding itself to meet the peculiar strain and competition that have arrayed itself against it. We have also had our attention called to the subject of manures, which, perhaps, does not

seem the most savoury theme; nevertheless, those who are best acquainted with agriculture will feel it is second to none in importance, and that none can bear more striking testimony to that beautiful arrangement of Providence which orders that nothing shall be without its use, and which calls out of that which, unless duly appreciated, would only tend to produce disgust, or generate disease, the elements of fertility and health. Hence it is, Gentlemen, that the rose and the violet are often found only

"To waste their sweetness on the desert air,"

while those substances that are most unlike the rose and the violet in their fragrance, may, if properly husbanded and applied, be found most useful, not only in invigorating our bodies, but in stocking our purses. Well, my Lords and Gentlemen, I am sure you all feel the paramount importance which the systematic and successful cultivation of agriculture, of art, and of science, must bestow on every country, and especially on a country which has had to cope with such difficulties as Ireland. And I trust that even that time of pressure and of suffering through which Ireland has passed, may be found not to have been without its redeeming features; and while we most earnestly pray against its recurrence, we still find that it had its advantages in the spirit of selfreliance and energy on the one side, and the kindliness, the compassion, and the pity on the other, which it may have been the means of extracting out of the blackened surface of calamity. You will only, perhaps, further permit me to add, that I think it especially refreshing at this time to see the peaceful pursuits of agriculture, and the bloodless triumphs of art duly encouraged and fostered by the inhabitants of our country, many other sons of which are shedding their best blood at the call of their Sovereign and their country; and I am sure you will alike feel that every call of duty ought to be energetically responded to and enthusiastically honoured. Still we cannot repine, but the contrary, when the result of these exertions we encourage and uphold is not to shorten, to cripple, or to destroy human life, but to prolong, to enrich, and to adorn it.