THE IRISH MONTHLY: A Magazine of General Literature. NINTH YEARLY VOLUME. 1881. HECA DUBLIN M. H. GILL & SON, 50 UPPER SACKVILLE-STREET. LONDON: BURNS & OATES; SIMPKIN, MARSHALL & CO. THE IRISH MONTHLY is sent poet free for Seven Shillings. "More than commonly beautiful."-The Academy. "Full of beauty, very sweet and pure. The best religious poetry we have seen this long time."-Dublin Review. "As pretty as they are pious."-The Month. "One of the most useful and charming embodiments of Catholic piety which has issued from the press."-Irishman. "These poems are simple, devotional, musical, and eloquent."-Irish Ecclesiastical Record. "Une admirable collection de poésies."-Propagateur Catholique. "They will meet with prompt and warm recognition from all cultured readers."— The Nation. M. H. GILL & SON, 50 UPPER SACKVILLE-STREet, Dublin. PREFACE. THIS THIS Magazine is about to enter on the tenth year of its existence. The volume now finished is the ninth; and the next will complete the first decade of our rosary of years. How far shall we have gone in the chaplet when the beads fall from the hands which first strung them together? No other magazine of this kind, having this Catholic city of Dublin for headquarters, has ever lasted so long. James Duffy, whose eminently praiseworthy career ought before this to have found some record in our pages, started with his usual energy and enterprise the Fireside Magazine, the Irish Catholic Magazine, and the Hibernian Magazine, all different in aim and price; but the existence of all three together hardly stretched over a larger span than our IRISH MONTHLY has reached already without the least sign of being weary of life. Indeed, like the Athenian who conceived a spite against Aristides simply from hearing him continually called "the just," some subscribers come to look on this monotonous perseverance as a grievance and a bore. They object to a periodical, not for being worse than usual, but simply because it keeps going on. Now, that is the very thing we want in Ireland-to keep going on. A very clever Catholic journal, published in New York, under a name which is the most familiar of all such names to Irish newspaper readers, ended a leader lately by saying: "The F. J. is farther from satisfying us than it is from satisfying our friends; but give us twenty thousand more subscribers than we have-and our friends could give us that many in six months-and there would be an F. J. that, every week, would make the sparks fly." A mere addition, you see, of only 20,000 to its actual constituency of-how many millions shall we say? Yet, due proportion being observed, we can make the words our own. Many of these additional supporters are likely to come to us by cablegram, We have been not a little touched by the affectionate interest shown in this magazine by members of the great community |