ery much aid the cause of learning and the future progress of our
knowledge.

The following traditions, we would fain hope, will not be found quite
destitute of utility. They are some addition to our existing stock of
knowledge, either as illustrating English history, manners, and customs
now obsolete, or as a collection of legends, having truth for their
basis, however disfigured in their transmission through various
modifications of error, the natural obscurity arising from distance, and
the distorted media through which they must necessarily be viewed.
Perhaps a main source of this inaccuracy arises from the many and
heterogeneous uses to which the breakings up, the fragments of tradition
have been subjected and applied. Like those detached yet beautiful
remnants of antiquity, built up with other and absolutely worthless
materials in the rude structures of the barbarian by whom they have been
disfigured, traditions are generally presented to us torn from their
original connection with edifices once renowned for beauty and
magnificence. It is our wish, as it has been our aim, to rescue these
ruins from degradation and decay. Gathered from many an uninviting heap
of chaotic matter, they are now presented in a different form, and under
a more popular aspect. We cannot pretend to say that we have invariably
assigned to them their true origin, or that their real character and
position have been ascertained. Still, we would hope, that, as relics of
the past rescued from the oblivion to which they were inevitably
hastening, they are not either an uninteresting or inelegant addition to
the literature of our country.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] "They worshipped fire as the representative of the Deity,
which they kept continually burning on the tops of their highest
mountains."--_Foreign Quarterly Review_, No. XV.: Art. "Popular Poetry,"
p. 77.

[7] That Ireland has not always presented so degrading and uncivilised
an aspect as now exists in that unhappy country, there is abundant
testimony to convince the most incredulous. Camden, an author by no
means partial on this score, says:--"The Irish scholars of St. Patrick
profited so notably in Christianity that, in the succeeding age, Ireland
was termed '_Sanctorum Patria_.'" Their monks so excelled in learning
and piety, that they sent whole flocks of most holy men into all parts
of Europe, "who were founders of the most eminent monasteries both there
and in Britain."

"A residence i