TO MY BRETHREN OF

THE BAR OF IRELAND,

The following Tale,

FOUNDED UPON EVENTS DISCLOSED DURING A CELEBRATED TRIAL,

IN WHICH

THE HIGHEST PROFESSIONAL SKILL,

THE MOST EMINENT JUDICIAL ABILITY,

AND THE MOST UNWEARIED ATTENTION ON THE PART OF THE JURY,

WERE SIGNALLY DISPLAYED,

Is most respectfully Inscribed.

PREFACE.

It has often occurred to my mind that the reason why so many novels are untrue to nature arises from the authors relying upon their own imagination for their characters and incidents, instead of drawing from real life. They never can be at a loss for subjects. In towns every mansion, throughout the country every rural abode, would furnish materials for a narrative, if the hand of Genius touched them. "Give Cæsar Otway a green field, an old stone, and a tree, and he will write a book upon them," was said of a deceased Irish topographer. This was quite enough to show the confidence reposed in the Reverend author, but it is rare to find talents capable of such performance. I feared to trust to my capacity. Claiming no alliance with that genius which may fearlessly rely on the imaginative faculty alone, I preferred taking my hero and heroine from a recent trial in the Irish Court of Common Pleas, which disclosed so many striking scenes, and stirring

events, that even my unpractised pen could hardly make them uninteresting. For several months this story has been unfolding itself to the public, and though, at the outset, I was reminded by a candid reviewer, that I lacked imagination and the vision and faculty divine, yet, on the whole, I have been very leniently dealt with. To be sure, I did not pretend to much originality. Many of the scenes, several of the letters, all the speeches of counsel, the charge of the learned judge, were all familiar to the reader. These letters and speeches appeared to me deserving of finding some more permanent place than the columns of the daily or weekly press, and I had the presumption to think I was capable of weaving them, with some additions of my own, so as to form an entertaining story. I was warned "that this experiment required both care and judgment for its successful accomplishment." The friendly critic, and not the less friendly because somewhat blunt and rough of speech, said, "the real facts. should neither be too closely adhered to, nor too widely departed from." For obvious reasons I had no desire to keep very close to real facts, and, if I am censured for having "too widely departed from them," I must shelter myself under the high authority of the greatest novelist of Britain, whose words

I quote:-" A poor fellow, like myself, weary with ransacking his own barren and bounded imagination, looks out for some general subject in the huge and boundless field of history, which holds forth examples of every kind; lights on some personage, or some combination of circumstances, which he thinks may be advantageously used as the basis of a fictitious narrative; bedizens it with such colouring as his skill suggests; ornaments it with such romantic circumstances as may heighten the general effect; invests it with such shades of character as will best contrast it with each other; and thinks, perhaps, he has done some service to the public if he can present to them a lively fictitious picture, for which the original anecdote or circumstance which he made free to press into his service only furnished a slight sketch." This is what I have attempted. It remains with the public to approve or condemn my effort.

DUBLIN, October 1st, 1861.