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HARVARD

COLLEGE
LIBRARY

1870, May 30.
Gift of

Theodore &. Colburn,
of Cambridge.
76.26.1854.)

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LORD BROUGHAM AND VAUX.

POETRY HAS SAID, THAT

THE FRIENDSHIP OF A GREAT MAN IS A GIFT OF THE GODS."

IN CURRAN'S

I ONCE POSSESSED IT,

IN LORD BROUGHAM'S

I AGAIN ENJOY IT.

TO THESE PAGES, THEREFORE, AFFECTIONATELY DEVOTED

To the Memory of the One,

I PROUDLY AND GRATEFULLY, WITH HIS OWN PERMISSION, PREFIX

The Name of the other.

LONDON, October, 1850.

PREFACE.

THE book upon which the present work is founded, after having gone through two editions, has been now out of print for very many years. Constant occupation in a laborious profession hitherto rendered its revision impossible, and I was unwilling that a third edition should issue in its originally crude and imperfect state. Comparative leisure now enables me to reproduce it, let me hope, somewhat more deserving of the indulgence with which it was received.

The period of which it treats was one of vital interest to Ireland, and the men which it produced were not unworthy of the period. My object has been, touching as lightly as possible on the politics of the time, to give merely personal sketches of the characters as they appeared upon the scene to me. Many of these were my acquaintances, some of them my intimates; and the aim throughout has been a verisimilitude in the portraiture-in short, to make the reader as familiar with the originals as I was myself. Of many of these it is possible he may not have even heard the names, and of many others very little more. Let me hope that he will rejoice in a more intimate acquaintance with them, and that, in endeavoring to elevate the land of my birth, I may also have made some humble return for the kindness bestowed on me by that of my adoption.

LONDON, November, 1850.

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