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. ON 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., Rev. Thomas Finlay, S. J., Edward Harding, Rev. Michael Watson, S. J., of Melbourne, Oscar Wilde, M. O'C. Morris Bishop, and among those whose names cannot be published, the Author of "Christian Schools and Scholars," the Author of "Tyborne," and the writer of the excellent sketches in our own pages of "Eugene O'Curry," and "Hogan, the Sculptor." To these names of distinction or of promise our present volume joins, amongst others, Lord O'Hagan and Sir Charles Gavan Duffy; and in our next volume we are allowed to hope for the co-operation of Lady Herbert of Lea, Lord Emly, Doctor Mapother, the Rev. T. E. Bridgett, C. SS. R., and, even amidst all his anxious labours, the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. Thus it is that our Magazine strives to put in practice, as regards its friends and contributors, the wise advice of Dr. Johnson: "If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances in life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, sir, should keep his friendship in constant repair." Our new Volume and its successors will begin at the natural date for beginning, New Year's Day. Home Subscribers will henceforth be good enough to defray the cost of postage, adding a shilling to the small annual subscription of six shillings, as our Australian friends have from the first added three shillings for this purpose, and Subscribers within the postal union (France, United States, &c.), two shillings a year. And all are requested to pour their subsidies into our treasury at once, and thus save the useless expense, labour, and delay of any further personal application. So closes our first lustrum. Our sixth year begins with the best hopes, wishes, resolutions, and prayers. Let one of these prayers take the form of the genial greeting which shall soon be current, whilst we wish to our kind readers, and they in return wish to us and our Magazine, many happy New Years. |