the author of this Work may be permitted to say, that he for many years possessed the very best opportunities of collecting these traditions; and that he did not allow such opportunities to pass altogether unimproved, it is hoped that what he now offers to the public will be considered sufficient testimony.

It is long since he formed the design of delineating, in a series of compositions, the character, objects, and proceedings of each of the principal insurrectionary confederacies that have, for the last two hundred and fifty years, afflicted Ireland. With this view he has collected, both from traditional and written sources, much information not to be met with in regular history, which, should circumstances permit, he intends to arrange into narratives, which those who are fond of such studies as elucidate a nation's annals, may take an interest in perusing.

In drawing up these national narratives, some progress has already been made. This book forms the second of the series. The first, which gives an account of the great rebellion of the United Irishmen, has been published, in a mutilated form, under the name of " O'Halloran, or the Insurgent Chief;" which is, perhaps, too romantic a

title for the matter-of-fact statements it contains. A more complete edition, under the more appropriate title of "The United Irishmen," is in contemplation. In the form in which it now circulates, three editions have been published; two in this country, and one in the United States, the earliest of which appeared about this time last year. The two others were published without the author's knowledge; but under circumstances which, whether injurious to him or not, render it impossible for him to obtain redress. Of one of these editions he would complain, if complaint were of any use, because it issued from a sourcethe Minerva press-whose proverbial indifference respecting the literary merit or demerit of its publications is not well calculated to serve any work with which it intermeddles. The other London edition may be considered rather complimentary, as it gave the work a place in a neatly printed edition of a series of novels of old and classical standing, to which honourable situation its age certainly could not have been the quality which induced the publisher to raise it.

The scenes of the history now submitted to the public, are, like those of "O'Halloran," chiefly laid in the North of Ireland;

but the transactions it narrates are of a date thirty years anterior to those embraced by that work. The majority of the actors in both works belonged to the population of Ulster; the lower and middle classes of whom speak a dialect very similar to that spoken by the Scotch Lowlanders, from whom they are mostly descended. The more perceptible shades of difference between these dialects, consist in the tone and turn of the expression, and the structure of the sentences, rather than in the pronunciation of the words, although in this there is also a frequent dissimilarity.

This is a fact relative to the language of nearly two millions of the people of Ireland, which seems scarcely to be known in other countries. Indeed, the degree of ignorance which Irishmen find to exist abroad, in relation to the character and condition of their country and its inhabitants, often surprises them, and, to such as have never travelled from their native island, is scarcely credible. It would seem as if no other idea could be entertained of an Irishman than that of a rash, superstitious, although sometime shrewd ignoramus, who can neither speak without making a bull, nor act without making a blunder. It is imagined that the Irish are all Papists and bog-trot

ters. It is forgot, or rather in most instances it is not known, that in the province of Ulster alone, nearly two millions of people, at least one-fourth of the population of the whole Island, are neither the one or the other.

The characteristics of the immense population of Ulster seem, indeed, by some strange oversight, never to be taken into account by either orators, historians, or travellers, when speaking of Irishmen. The world is scarcely ever informed that an industrious, prosperous, and intelligent race of men, equal in number to the whole population of Scotland, inhabit the Northern province of Ireland, who possess scarcely a single trait of character resembling that compound of turbulence, rudeness, igorance, superstition, servility, and awkwardness, which, in the conception of foreigners, constitutes the half-civilized being called an Irishman. The Teagues, the Pats, the Larrys, and the Dennises of a tribe of romancewriters who have endeavoured to amuse their readers with pictures of Irish buffoonery, have undoubtedly contributed much to spread this false notion of the Irish character, which has gone abroad through the world. That these writers in general knew extremely little of the people they undertook

to describe, is evident from the unvarying sameness of their delineations, in which there is none of that individuality of feature, and freshness of colouring, which always distinguish drawings from real life. The pictures appear to be mere copies of copies, the original of which was drawn centuries ago; for it is a fact that they convey the very same idea of an Irishman that was entertained in the days of the Tudors. Indeed, this stale representation of the Irish character has so repeatedly gone the rounds. of publication, that an author who never had his foot on Irish ground, may draw it as accurately as Miss Edgeworth herself, by collecting his materials from books.

The truth with respect to the Irish people, however, is, that instead of exhibiting this unvarying sameness, so constantly attributed to them, there are, perhaps, no people in Christendom, inhabiting the same limited portion of country, more diversified in almost every thing that tends to form. and modify character. There is only one trait that may be said to be, in any measure common to them all; namely warmth of temperament ;-to which may be traced every peculiarity, whether of virtue or vice, that distinguishes them as a nation. But even this warmth varies extremely, not