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to the time when we had 'an only child,'—that is, twenty years ago. Shall the verdict not once more be against him?
I was young when this slander was first raised; my children were infants. I was one of a numerous and affectionate family; I had kind friends and a good cause. I struggled like a drowning person against disgrace, and reached the shore. Already these miserable affairs were half forgotten by the world; and in literary occupation, devotion to my sons, and the firm friendship of those who knew my real story, I thought to have spent the future of a stormy past. Mr Norton has not permitted this. Once more he has dragged me into shameful publicity; but on his own letter I will rest my justification, now and for ever!
Mr Norton says, he comes forward 'as a magistrate, and an administrator of justice,' to prove he has been just also, in his private affairs. In that capacity, and with that view, he proceeds to make the following admissions: he admits that we did not part on Lord Melbourne's account; and that before he ever made Lord Melbourne defendant in the action in 1836, he had already endeavoured to establish a case, "first against one gentleman, and then—I give Mr Norton's own printed words:—
'And then, respecting one or two others; hut no sufficient evidence was found. Then a negotiation for a separation was entered upon.'
In all that followed, he says he was guided by the advice of Sir W. Follett. Sir W. Follett is dead; but, fortunately, has left on record his contradiction of this falsehood, as any one may ascertain by reference to the 'Times' of June 25, 1836, where it is contradicted, on authority, by Messrs Currie and Woodgate. I have also a private letter from Sir W. Follett (whom I wrote to reproach), expressly repudiating the idea of having advised my husband. 'I was his counsel,' he says, 'not his adviser.' Perhaps nothing can better mark the opinion of the trial of 1836, than the anxiety shown by all parties to disavow their share in it.
Mr Norton admits that—(after this public trial, and these private efforts to establish cases against 'one or two others')—'It is true that in 1837 we contemplated a reunion,' and that the miserable jest between us was (on account of my having feared to meet him in an empty house, as he had proposed), that we adopted in our correspondence the signatures of a man and woman, the former of whom had been hung, for luring the latter to his house, and there murdering her. He feels that this requires a little explanation, and proceeds to say:—
'My own conduct, I admit, at that time was weak and vacillating in the extreme. I had loved her to madness for three or four years before I married her, and after we were united she had all power over me.'
I was a very young girl at school, when Mr Norton proposed for me, I was always maltreated by him from the earliest period of own mar-
