THE SLINGSBY PAPERS:

A Selection from the Writings

JONATHAN FREKE SLINGSBY.

DUBLIN:

J. MCGLASHAN, 50, UPPER SACKVILLE STREET.

WM. S. ORR AND CO., AMEN CORNER, LONDON.

I INSCRIBE UPON THESE PAGES

THE DISTINGUISHED NAME OF

CHARLES LEVER,

WHOSE FRIENDSHIP I VALUE,

AND WHOSE GENIUS I ADMIRE.

PREFACE.

THE following papers are a portion of several which have, within the last two years, appeared in the Dublin University Magazine. Some changes have been made in their order, and, here and there, a passage added to give the whole a continuity and sequence. The commendation with which, as detached pieces, they were received by the public press in this country and Great Britain, and even in America, is very gratifying to the author, and demands, what he now tenders, his grateful thanks.

His feelings, indeed, are not unlike those of the peasant of his own land, who, finding in a rath or bog of the retired country some tarnished ornament, offers it to the antiquary or goldsmith of the neighbouring town, and learns that it has a value beyond what he dared venture to put upon it—that it has been wrought with some skill-fashioned not untastefully, and adorned with some inlay that may, upon testing it, turn out to be gold-in fine, that, with a little brushing up, it may prove not only pleasant to look upon, but even useful as a fibula to clasp a mantle.

If the judgment of a larger public shall confirm the award of those who, in the first instance, inspect and pronounce upon every literary effort, the author will account himself fortunate, may be emboldened to complete, in a second volume, the circuit of the year.

and

CARRIGBAWN, February 1852.