be, the zeal of a partisan, neither taking nor yielding quarter, and always trying to give more than I got—but now all the acerbities and personal animosities thus provoked, so far as I am concerned, have passed away, and I a m able to view them in the distance through that prism with which the experience of years supplies every reflecting mind, mellowed by the subdued light of a sunshine which has passed its meridian. With every topic of the kind I have striven to deal in a calm and dispassionate manner, and where disapproval is pronounced, it will be found more mitigated than otherwise. Though I have extenuated at times I have not set down "aught in malice." I have made no attempt at fine writing; nor did my ambition soar above the production of a humble essay, and the presentation in readable form of the story of that city to which I came a stripling, fresh from school, and where, having passed into "the sere and yellow leaf," I still abide; a city which, through all its ups and downs, and manifold vicissitudes, I liked better than it liked me, and in whose permanent prosperity I shall always take a true and loyal interest. The events of her past; the principal annals of her early history; the many curious waifs of anecdote, fluttering amongst her folk-lore, I have striven to string together, and weave into a votive offering to hang before her shrine. If the web has been spoiled in the warping or wefting, the fault lies in the artisan and not in the material; but, whatever the result, I have done my best, and no one could do more. My Chronicles are now turned out of the workshop. The little barque in which they woo the breeze of public opinion is launched. For them I bespeak the favour of a dispassionate judgment, as they will, in a large measure, speak for themselves. Let them be appraised with reference less to the shortcomings of their author, than a reliance on their own intrinsic merits and value as records of the past; while, for myself, I would express a hope that the readers of the following pages will
"Be to my virtues very kind,
Be to my faults a little blind."
Leicester Street, Fitzroy,
Christmastide, 1888.
EDMUND FINN.
