st replace it by stimulating stories of
our own land: and it will not be safe to neglect poetry, for as a recent
poet sings--

"Dear to the Gael's the clash of swords,
And dear the ring of rhyme."

The editors will not print anything which they do not believe useful and
beneficial, but they must not be held responsible for every sentence and
sentiment in books originated, or reprinted, under their direction. A too
rigid strictness might involve an amount of alteration, which would be
fair neither to the author nor the reader, and would be fatal to the
generous and liberal freedom in which alone literature thrives. I will
only add that if the Irish people second our design cordially, the stream
which will now begin to flow shall not soon run dry. But remember that
success depends mainly on you and your compeers. What is the use of
writing books if they are not read and pondered on, and their lessons
taken to heart? Without a sympathetic audience the orator is only a lay
figure, without a sympathetic circle of readers the writer is a wasted
force. We labour for the young men and young women of Ireland, on whom the
future of our race depends; and our hope is that they may respond as
cordially as their predecessors did fifty years ago; that they may aim to
gain a complete knowledge of their own country, and come forth from the
study steeped in Irish memories, proud of Irish traditions, panting with
Irish hopes. Every Irishman, anywhere in the world, who wishes well to our
design, can help it a little; but there is one class whose good wishes are
indispensable. Father Hogan, a professor of Maynooth College, has appealed
to his brethren in the ministry, in language which I prefer to any I could
employ on the subject:--

"None like the working clergy (he says) can realise the baneful
effects that are produced by pernicious books, and how fatal to the
innocence of youth, and to the strength of national as well as of
personal character, they so often prove. There are none, moreover,
who have the same responsibility cast upon them to oppose the current
of evil, and to maintain at the same time the noble and traditional
generosity of the Church towards literature and men of letters. Our
denunciations of dangerous books, and especially of light and
licentious reading, would be justly regarded as mere empty sound were
we unwilling to lend a helping hand to a movement, the chief