PREFACE I HAVE many people to thank, for many things, and I have an explanation to make, but the thanks must come first. I offer my most sincere gratitude to Mrs. Butler and to Professor Edgeworth, for their kindness in permitting me to print Miss Edgeworths letters to Mrs. Bushe to Lord Dunsany, for the extract from Plays of Gods and Men, which has said for me what I could not say for myself to the Editors of the Spectator and of Punch, for their permission to use Martin Rosss letter and the quatrain to her memory to the IIon. Mrs. Campbell, the Right Hon. Sir Horace Plunkett, P.C., Captain Stephen Gvynn, M.P., Lady Coghill, Colonel Dawson, and other of Martin Rosss friends, for lending me the letters that she wrote to them even when these are not quoted verbatim, they have been of great service to me, and I am very grateful for having been allowed to see them. I have to explain what may strike some as singular, the omission, as far as was practicable, from the letters of Martin Ross, and from this book in general, of the names of her and my friends and relatives who are still living. I have been guided by a consensus of the opinion of those whom I have consulted, and also by my remembrance of Martin Rosss views on the subject, which she often expressed to inti in connectio with sundry and various volumes of collections, that have dealt with living concinporarics with a frankness that would have seemed cxcessivc in the case of a memoir of the life of Queen Anne. If I have gone to the opposite extreme, I hope it may be found a fault on the right side....