THE

IRISH MONTHLY:

A

Magazine of General Literature.

FIFTH YEARLY VOLUME.

1877.

DUBLIN:

M. H. GILL & SON, 50 UPPER SACKVILLE-STREET.

LONDON: BURNS & OATES; SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO.

THE annual subscription to the IRISH MONTHLY is Six Shillings, payable in advance (postage one shilling a year extra.)

The yearly Volume is issued at the beginning of each December, bound in embossed cloth, price Eight Shillings.

TO THE READER.

ΟΝ

N this leaf, otherwise doomed by the exigencies of binding to be left a blank, a few words may be set down, not necessary, indeed, but perhaps not useless, as a postscript to the present volume and a preface to its successor.

To "speed the parting guest," to commend our fifth yearly volume which is now happily completed, we trust that nothing more is needed than a glance at its table of contents. In many respects we neither expect nor desire to improve upon it, but in a few points we do. To those whose names appear there and to some who could not be induced to enhance the worth of their contributions by adding their names-amongst these last, notably to the author of "The New Utopia"-our most earnest thanks are due and are most sincerely given.

Let us with pride and gratitude assign a more permanent record in this place to a passage from one of our prospectuses which enumerates the following among the contributors who have brought the IRISH MONTHLY through the most critical period of its history: Lady Georgiana Fullerton, Miss Rosa Mulholland, Author of "Hester's History," "Eldergowan," "The First Christmas," &c.; Miss Kathleen O'Meara, the biographer of Ozanam and Bishop Grant, who, under the name of Grace Ramsay, has published some excellent fictions in London and New York; the Rev. Joseph Farrell, Author of "Lectures by a Certain Professor;" Rev. Edmund O'Reilly, S. J., the Rev. C. W. Russell, D. D., Aubrey de Vere, the Rev. Gerald Molloy, D. D., John O'Hagan, Q. C., Denis Florence MacCarthy, the Rev. R. B. O'Brien, D. D., Cecilia Caddell, Katharine Roche, Alice Esmonde, Ethel Tane, Wilfrid Meynell, Rev. Denis Murphy, S. J.,