PUBLIC LIET

241499

ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS 1001

Dublin Printed by JOHN S. FOLDS, 5, Bachelor's Walk.

TO MR. AND MRS. PEERADEAL.

DEAR PAPA AND MAMMA,

IF any should think me an imaginary being, such ought not to be surprised at finding me an imaginative one; (from ry to tive is no violent transition;) nor, if I be less sprightly than spriteful in my pursuits, should they overlook that goblin pedigree, which seems recorded by my second name. Readers will perhaps be for deriding the sounds of Paul Puck Peeradeal; but upon my ear they fall as harmoniously, as those of George Bubb Doddington,* at the least.

* Whose Diary was once in request; and, I believe, is still read.

Then as to my vocation. When even

Daffodils begin to peer,

shall not the offspring of a Peeradeal and a Pry be allowed to do so? And with what view should he thus peer, but that of cultivating a sort of second sight, and detecting what might escape less inquisitive and searching eyes?

For example, of detecting certain spectres; which, while in texture they may be thin, in number are as thick as those "autumnal leaves," which strew the paths of Newtown, or "brooks in Vallombrosa."-In the form of oral legends,* at least,-they crowd the mouths of beldams, and ears of the shuddering audience, which these find no difficulty in collecting.†

*

Considering the meaning which legend has acquired, my respected friend, Dr. Search, doubts whether this expression would, even in England, be a bull; and is clear that it is not one in Bo-otia, the name which Mr. Pope has courteously bestowed on the Emerald Isle.

† I have lately been assured, that the recital of fairy legends, and tales of apparitions, forms no unusual part of the entertain

But mine is not a demissa per aures case. My Peer and Pry extraction (to say nothing of the peeping precepts and practice of Uncle Paul) secures to these goblin sprites a different entrée; and accordingly the phantoms, to which I would introduce my reader, are all-if he will but believe me,-in my eye. I am, Dear Papa and Mamma,

Your duly dutiful Son and Heir, (Which some will be for pronouncing air,)

PAUL PUCK PEERADEAL.

My Parents having modestly declined to accept of the above, as a dedication, Doctor Search has kindly suggested and supplied one, which I substitute and subjoin. With more of frankness than of compliment, he observes, that a mediocre work cannot be put under patronage more appropriate than that of Mediocrity.

ment, at that strange conversazione, an Irish wake; a meeting which, maugre its ghost-stories, and the sight of the wan corpse which its business is to watch, can "create," if not "a soul"'—a spirit, of wild and incongruous festivity ;-not indeed "under" but over "the ribs of Death."