“A friend unknown to you, but not altogether so to fame, and one. whom no display of the subtlest ingenuity on behalf of your acute and sagacious intellect could ever decypher through the medium of this epistle, begs to convey to you a valuable portion of anonymous information.  When he says that he is not unknown to fame, the assertion, as far as it goes, is pregnant wid veracity.  Mark that I say, as far as it goes, by which is meant the assertion as well as the fame of your friend, the inditer of this significant epistle.  Forty-eight square miles of good sound fame your not inerudite correspondent can conscientiously lay claim to; and although there is, with regret I admit it, a considerable portion of the square superficies alluded to, waste and uncultivated moor, yet I can say, wid that racy touch of genial and expressive pride which distinguishes men of letters in general, that the other portions of this fine district are inhabited by a multitudinity of population in the highest degree creditable to the prolific powers of the climate.  ’Tisn’t all as one, then, as that thistle-browsing quadruped.  Barney Heffeman, who presumes, in imitation of his betters, to write Philomath after his name, and whose whole extent of literary reputation is not more than two or three beggarly townlands, whom, by the way, he is inoculating successfully wid his own ripe and flourishing ignorance.  No, sir; nor like Gusty Gibberish, or (as he has been most facetiously christened by his Reverence, Father O’Flaherty) Demosthenes M’Gosther, inasmuch as he is distinguished for an aisy and prodigal superfluity of mere words, unsustained by intelligibility or meaning, but who cannot claim in his own person a mile and a half of dacent reputation.  However, quid multis Mr. Hyacinthus; ’tis no indoctrinated or obscure scribe who now addresses you, and who does so from causes that may be salutary to your own health and very gentlemanly fame, according as you resave the same, not pretermitting interests involving, probably, on your part, an abundant portion of pecuniarity.

“In short, then, it has reached these ears, Mr. Hyacinthus, and between you and me, they are not such a pair as, in consequence of their longitudinity, can be copiously shaken, or which rise and fall according to the will of the wearer; like those of the thistle-browser already alluded to; it has reached them that you are about to substantiate a a disreputable—­excuse the phrase—­co-partnership wid four of the most ornamental villains on Hibernian earth, by which you must understand me to mane that the villains aforesaid are not merely accomplished in all the plain principles and practices of villainy, but finished off even to its natest and most inganious decorations.  Their whole life has been most assiduously and successfully devoted to a general violation of the ten commandments, as well as to the perpetual commission of the seven deadly sins.  Nay, the ‘reserved cases’ themselves can’t escape them, and it is well