which has enabled them to obtain this new issue on such favourable terms.  It is with feelings of no ordinary pleasure that I add also the names of the Superioresses of nearly all the convents of the order of Our Lady of Mercy and of the order of the Presentation, to the list of our benefactors.  With the exception of, perhaps, two or three convents of each order, they have been unanimous in their generous efforts to assist the circulation of the Irish History, and of all our publications; and this kindness has been felt by us all the more deeply, because from our own poverty, and the poverty of the district in which we live, we have been unable to make them any return, or to assist them even by the sale of tickets for their bazaars.  Such disinterested charity is, indeed, rare; and the efforts made by these religious—­the true centres of civilization in Ireland—­to promote the education and to improve the moral and intellectual tone of the lower and middle classes, are beyond all praise, combined, as these efforts are, with never-ceasing labour for the spiritual and temporal good of the poor in their respective districts.  Nor should I omit a word for the friends across the wide Atlantic, to whom the very name of Ireland is so precious, and to whom Irish history is so dear.  The Most Rev. Dr. Purcell, Archbishop of Cincinnati, has pronounced the work to be the only Irish history worthy of the name.  John Mitchel has proclaimed, in the Irish Citizen, that a woman has accomplished what men have failed to do; and Alderman Ternan, at a banquet in New Fork, has uttered the same verdict, and declares that there, at least, no other history can compete with ours, although Moore and D’Arcy Magee have preceded us in their efforts to promote the knowledge of what Ireland has been, and the hope of what Ireland may yet become.

M.F.C. 
St. Clare’s content, KENMARK, co.  Kerry,
May 8th, 1868.

FOOTNOTES: 

[A] The Rev. U. Burke, of St. Jarlath’s College, Tuam, has a note on this subject, in a work which he is at this moment passing through the press, and which he kindly permits me to publish.  He says:  “This book [the “Illustrated History of Ireland”] ought to be in the hands of every young student and of every young Irish maiden attending the convent schools.  Oh, for ten thousand Irish ladies knowing the history of Ireland!  How few know anything of it!  The present volume, by Sister Francis Clare, is an atoning sacrifice for this sin of neglect.”

I am aware that the price of the “Illustrated History of Ireland,” even in its present form, although it is offered at a sacrifice which no bookseller would make, is an obstacle to its extensive use as a school history.  We purpose, however, before long, to publish a history for the use of schools, at a very low price, and yet of a size to admit of sufficient expansion for the purpose.  Our countrymen must, however, remember that only a very large number of orders can enable the work to be published as cheaply as it should be.  It would save immense trouble and expense, if priests, managers of schools, and the heads of colleges, would send orders for a certain number of copies at once.  If every priest, convent, and college, ordered twelve copies for their schools, the work could be put in hands immediately.