reverence
brought back to England has reached the Irish Protestant clergy, and
they no longer make antiquity a reproach, or make the maxims of the
iconoclast part of their creed.

Is it extravagant to speculate on the possibility of the Episcopalian,
Catholic, and Presbyterian clergy joining in an Antiquarian Society to
preserve our ecclesiastical remains--our churches, our abbeys, our
crosses, and our fathers' tombs, from fellows like the Meath
road-makers? It would be a politic and a noble emulation of the sects,
restoring the temples wherein their sires worshipped for their children
to pray in. There's hardly a barony wherein we could not find an old
parish or abbey church, capable of being restored to its former beauty
and convenience at a less expense than some beastly barn is run up, as
if to prove and confirm the fact that we have little art, learning, or
imagination.

Nor do we see why some of these hundreds of half-spoiled buildings
might not be used for civil purposes--as almshouses, schools,
lecture-rooms, town-halls. It would always add another grace to an
institution to have its home venerable with age and restored to beauty.
We have seen men of all creeds join the Archaeological Society to
preserve and revive our ancient literature. Why may we not see, even
without waiting for the aid of an Irish Parliament, an Antiquarian
Society, equally embracing the chief civilians and divines, and
charging itself with the duties performed in France by the Commission
of Antiquities and Monuments?

The Irish antiquarians of the last century did much good. They called
attention to the history and manners of our predecessors which we had
forgotten. They gave a pedigree to nationhood, and created a faith that
Ireland could and should be great again by magnifying what she had
been. They excited the noblest passions--veneration, love of glory,
beauty, and virtue. They awoke men's fancy by their gorgeous pictures
of the past, and imagination strove to surpass them by its creations.
They believed what they wrote, and thus their wildest stories sank into
men's minds. To the exertions of Walker, O'Halloran, Vallancey, and a
few other Irish academicians in the last century, we owe almost all the
Irish knowledge possessed by our upper classes till very lately. It was
small, but it was enough to give a dreamy renown to ancient Ireland;
and if it did nothing else, it smoothed the reception of Bunting's
music, and identified Moor