islands; and the disinterestedness of its lovers, and their inveterate contempt of obstacles, and abhorrence of any species of procrastination, has been a subject of general eulogium.

Love is the only object of liberty and equality as yet enjoyed by the Irish people. Even among the better orders, money, not being in general there the circulating medium of matrimony, is always despised when it does not attend, and abused behind its back as inveterately as if it was a sub-sheriff.

A love-stricken couple seldom lose their precious moments practising idle sensibilities, and waiting for bank-notes that won’t come, or parchments that have not one word of truth in them. Such illusory proceedings were very sensibly dispensed with, and a justifiable impatience generally, because quite natural, sent formality about its business. The lovers themselves came to the real point; a simple question and categorical reply settled the concours at once; and marriage and possession occupied not unfrequently the second or third evening after a first acquaintance, whilst the first of a honey-moon, and the commencement of a new family, dated sometimes from the first evening of acquaintance. After that knot was tied, they always had an indefinite time and unrestrained opportunities to cultivate their love, or what remained of it, for the remainder of their existence.

This rapid, but rational consummation of love-matches in Ireland, however, left no opportunity or field for amatory adventures, as in countries where love, jealousy, and murder are often seen bubbling in the same cauldron!

No doubt the Irish manner of courtship plunders love of its episodes, romance of its refinements, and consequently my fair English readers of those sentimentalities which so beautifully garnish the produce of imagination-workers. Take it all for all, however, Irish love is found to answer very well for domestic purposes, and, making allowances for wear and tear, to be, I believe, to the full, as durable as in any other country.

In a plainer way, I now frankly confess that during the composition of the three volumes, my inventive genius, (if I have any,) like one of the seven sleepers, lay dormant in my occiput, and so torpid, that not one fanciful anecdote or brilliant hyperbole awakened during the whole of that ordinary period; and I fear that there is not an incident in the whole which has any just chance of melting down my fair sensitives into that delicious trickle of pearly tears, so gratifying to the novel writers, or even into one soft sigh of sympathetic feeling, so naturally excited by exploits in aerial castles, or the embroidered scenery of fancy and imagination.

Of the egotistical tone of these volumes I am also most gravely accused. The best reply I can make, (and it seems rather a decisive one,) is, that it would be a task somewhat difficult for the wisest author that ever put pen to paper, to separate egotism from autobiography; indeed, I believe it has never yet been practically attempted. Were I to leave myself out of three volumes of my own personal anecdotes, I rather think I should be consigned to Miss Edgeworth for the destiny of increasing her volume of Irish Blunderers. I fancy also that with most ladies and gentlemen in these civilized parts of this terrestrial globe, the amour propre (alias egotism) holds a very considerable rank amongst their intellectual gallantries; and, as in garçon Cupid’s amours, it would be no easy matter for either sex to enforce profound silence on the matter of their adoration; and I apprehend the singular number will hardly be turned out of service in the English grammar to gratify my commentators by making me write nonsense.

These observations are addressed to my good-humoured and playful critics; but there is another class of a very different description. I have been honoured by the animadversions of as many of these sharp-set gentry as any uncelebrated author could possibly expect, or indeed any reasonable writer could possibly wish for; and, though the comparison may be considered as out of course, I shall nevertheless add it to the rest of my errata, and compare my orchestra of cavillers to the performers in a Dutch concert, where every musician plays his own tune, and no two of their airs or instruments are in harmony.

Literary works may be fairly termed literary chopping-blocks; like the human species, they never fail to have plenty of snarlers to cut up the reputation of the author, and probably the very best parts of his production. However, it is consolatory to perceive that many of those ingenious gentry who have done me that honour may with convenience and economy pluck their own wings to make their pens of; and I am satisfied that if the Roman gander who saved the Capitol were permitted to return to earth, and visit the metropolis of England, he would feel infinite gratification at finding that so many of his family have been raised to the rank of critics, and are now flourishing amongst the human species.

By some of my most inveterate cavillers I have been accused of personality. Never was an imputation worse founded. I feel incapable of leaning on any fair or worthy person. But it is impossible for any biographical writer to avoid topics of general allusion, which the equivocal good-nature of intimate friends seldom fails to find out an appropriate application for. Should the proprietors of shallow egotism or arrogant folly, however, (and such things are,) please to fit caps on their own heads, and look at general allusion through a microscope, I do not feel myself bound either to undeceive or confirm their applications—the qui capit ille facit is their own act, not my aphorism.

In truth, the multiplicity of inaccuracies, fibs, bounces, and impossibilities imputed to me are of so many families and ranks, that I scarcely know how to arrange their table of precedence; but as all manner of things connected with theology, from the days of Jupiter Ammon to Pope Joan, and thence to our own episcopacy, take place of temporal concerns, so I rather think I should adopt the same course of procedure; and therefore, as the doctrine of spirits and ghosts is incontestably connected with theological dogmas, so I conceive it most decorous to begin with that very supernatural subject.

The article as to Lord Rossmore’s Bansheen, (in the first volume,) has been the favourite subject of general animadversion, incredulity, and inveterate impeachment of my orthodoxy, common sense, religion, and morality. Yet, strange to say, I absolutely persist unequivocally as to the matters therein recited, and shall do so to the day of my death, after which event I shall be able to ascertain individually the matter of fact to a downright certainty, though I fear I shall be enjoined to absolute secrecy.

To give new food to my cavillers, I now reassert what has been already read with expressed surprise at my heterodoxy—namely, that no man or woman, old or young, professing Christianity, and yet denying the possible appearance of apparitions in the world, can be a genuine, or indeed any Christian at all; nay, not even an unadulterated Deist, and most certainly not a member of the Jewish persuasion, as this can be his only argument. Nor shall I omit in my following challenge every member of the 104 sects that have, like suckers, sprouted out of and weakened the established Church of England, (which, I think, might, after reforming the clergy, have served people