ashes. I stopped with him for a fortnight, and succeeded in procuring
a tuition in the house of a wealthy farmer named Piers Murphy, near
Corcreagh. This, however, was a tame life, and a hard one, so I resolved
once more to give up a miserable salary and my board, for the fortunate
chances which an ardent temperament and a strong imagination perpetually
suggested to me as likely to be evolved out of the vicissitudes of life.
Urged on, therefore, by a spirit of romance, I resolved to precipitate
myself on the Irish Metropolis, which I accordingly entered with two
shillings and ninepence in my pocket; an utter stranger, of course
friendless; ignorant of the world, without aim or object, but not
without a certain strong feeling of vague and shapeless ambition, for
the truth was I had not yet begun to think, and, consequently, looked
upon life less as a reality than a vision.

Thus have I, as a faithful, but I fear a dull guide, conducted my reader
from the lowly cottage in Prillisk, where I first drew my breath, along
those tangled walks and green lanes which are familiar to the foot of
the peasant alone, until I enter upon the highways of the world, and
strike into one of its greatest and most crowded thoroughfares--the
Metropolis. Whether this brief sketch of my early and humble life, my
education, my sports, my hopes and struggles, be calculated to excite
any particular interest, I know not; I can only assure my reader that
the details, so far as they go, are scrupulously correct and authentic,
and that they never would have been obtruded upon him, were it not from
an anxiety to satisfy him that in undertaking to describe the Irish
peasantry as they are, I approach the difficult task with advantages of
knowing them, which perhaps few Irish writers ever possessed; and this
is the only merit which I claim.

A few words now upon the moral and physical condition of the people may