If there be no end to the making of books, there should at least be a suitable and preconceived ending to all so made; and herein lies the difficulty for most writers.
The popular fictionist seems under the impression that the public want close upon a couple of hundred thousand words, filling a plump, ungraceful volume, for their few modest pennies; the compiler of books of pedantic information pads his product into a stately quarto, and the guide-book maker descends to small type and badly designed pages and crowds as much as he can into a small pocketable volume.
From these species of printed things ramify many varieties, and the author of this work has many times been placed in a quandary as to what mammoth proportions it might not assume were he to allow his predilections to run riot through its pages.
It is easy to say with Sterne, “Let us write a duodecimo,” but with what measure may an enthusiastic or just admiration be limited as to the overflowing volume of appreciation?
Mere cubic capacity as to size of the volume, or the superficial area of its pages, will not serve. The arts of the publisher and his printer can nullify any preconceived plans of this nature.
A judicious selection of the material to be used would be much more likely to bring about the desired result, though again we are confronted by the moving question as to how elaborate or extensive a work is necessary in order to cover the ground as minutely or as broadly as might be desired.
The result will not be found to approach the completeness of an historical record, nor yet the flimsiness of a mere sentimental journey along well-worn roads. It fills, rather, the gap which lies between, in view of the greater interest which is daily being shown in all things relating to Ireland—its literature, its history, its architecture, and its arts. Hence to a considerable public, which, it may be presumed, will ultimately show an interest therein, it is offered as an appreciation of the Ireland of the past and the present, based upon something more than a personally conducted tour to Killarney, or a jaunting-car ride about Queenstown, while awaiting the departure of the Atlantic mail-boat.
CHAPTER II.
A TRAVEL CHAPTER
THE true peripatetic philosopher is the only genuine traveller, and the vagabond and the pilgrim are but varieties of the species. The “personally conducted,” alone or in droves, have no realization of the unquestionable authority by which nature “sets up her boundaries and fences; and so circumscribes the discontent of man,” to borrow the words of Sterne.
The individual who merely wants to “get there” in the shortest possible time, and by the most direct road, knows not the joys of travel, nor ever will.