7 MARCH 1903, Page 27

Messrs. M. Dent and Co. publish The Irish Sketch-Book, by

William Makepeace Thackeray, edited by Walter Jerrold, illus- trated by C. E. Brock (3s. net). The Sketch-Book was the result of an arrangement with Messrs. Chapman and Hall, and was written to order in 1842 (before the great famine catastrophe which so profoundly changed the tone of Irish life). The tour lasted four months, and the book was nearly finished by the time that the traveller returned. Mr. Jerrold alludes to a mysterious preface, strongly " national " in its tone, which should have ap- peared in the second edition, but was suppressed, and was an- nounced by the Century Magazine, and again kept back. Where is it?