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W. F. WAKEMAN, AND W. CURRY, JUN. AND CO.; IN LONDON BY RICHARD GROOMBRIDGE;
WILLMER AND SMITH, LIVERPOOL; AMBERY, MANCHESTER; DRAKE, BIRMINGHAM ;
BOWACK, EDINBURGH; J. M'LEOD, GLASGOW; JACKSON, NEW YORK; WARDLE AND DOBSON,
PHILADELPHIA; GRAY AND BOWEN, BOSTON; AND G. G. BENNIS, PARIS.

Price 5s. in Twelve Monthly Parts, and 6s. 6d. bound in Cloth.

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PREFACE.

CONTRARY to the fears of many of its warm friends, and perhaps the hopes of a few interested enemies, the DUBLIN PENNY JOURNAL has, as yet, escaped the fate of brief existence usually attendant on every attempt to establish in Ireland a Periodical, unconnected with sect or party; and having completed a year in its more humble form, as a Weekly Publication suited to the pockets of the poorer classes of society, now appears before the public in the more matured and imposing shape of a Volume, not unworthy, it is to be hoped, of the library of the scholar and the gentleman.

It would be wholly inconsistent with the spirit in which this work has been hitherto conducted, to speak of its claims to public approbation in terms of egotistical praise. But without offence to good taste, some licence may be allowed to its Conductors in explaining to the class of readers into whose hands it is most likely in its present form to fall, the objects they had in view in projecting the Journal-the difficulties they have had to encounter in its progress and the measure of success which has followed their labours.

The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, as well as other cheap periodicals of a similar character and acknowledged merit, had been but a few months in existence, when it appeared obvious that, however excellent in matter as in intention those works confessedly were, they were but little suited to the tastes of a people whose only literary food had been for a long period the highly seasoned and inflammatory stimulants furnished by religious and political animosities. To such a people, the useful knowledge which those works afforded, could have offered but little attraction, and the historical subjects and illustrations with which they were accompanied, though well calculated to excite a spirit of pride and national glory in the minds of Englishmen, had but little such talismanic power of association in the minds of "the men of the Emerald Isle." The subjects were, in fact, too useful to attract a people unacquainted with the practical value of arts and manufactures -too foreign or too British for Irish sympathies-and too generally serious for the mercurial and laughter-loving temperament of the people of Ireland. Had they been better adapted to this country, the DUBLIN PENNY JOURNAL would not have been thought of, for its Conductors were as much above the temptation to infringe, for the sake of gain, on the ground previously occupied by others, as above the folly of supposing that they had the ability to do so with the slightest hope of success. But the unsuitableness of those excellent works to the peculiar tastes and feelings of the country appearing so obvious, they thought that the opportunity afforded by the novel excitement of penny periodicals, should not be wholly lost without an effort to make it more generally applicable to Ireland. Agreeing, therefore, with its valuable predecessors only in the exclusion of politics, and sectarian religion, and in the general desire to be useful and instructive, the PENNY JOURNAL started on new and exclusively national ground, and with national as well as useful objects in view. The subjects chiefly chosen were such as were most likely to attract the attention of the Irish people, next to those of politics and polemics, by which their minds had been previously and almost exclusively occupied-namely, the history, biography, poetry, antiquities, natural history, legends, and traditions of the country-subjects which can never fail of interesting the feelings of a people. The plan was novel and experimental, and, at the same time, animating to minds zealous for the moral improvement of the country. But its conductors, though not unconscious of the difficulties which were likely to obstruct their exertions, soon found that they had greatly underrated them. They

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