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her. To her honour and credit, however, she at once acceded to Mr Norton's request. I received both, from her and her husband, written assurances that they would abide by my decision, whatever it might be; and on these terms I entered on my difficult task. I then, for the first time, learnt Mrs Norton's side of the question. I found (not from her assertions, but by the documentary proofs in her possession) that I had been advising Mr Norton, not on his real case, but on a series of invented fables which he had strung together and consulted me upon. Nearly every statement he had made to me, turned out to be untrue. I found Mrs Norton anxious only on one point, and nearly broken-hearted about it; namely, the restoration of her children. She treated her pecuniary affairs as a matter of perfect indifference, and left me to arrange them with Mr Norton as I thought fit. I found her husband, on the contrary, anxious only about the pecuniary part of the arrangement, and so obviously making the love of the mother for her offspring, a means of barter and bargain, that I wrote to him I could be 'no party to any arrangement which made money the price of Mrs Norton's fair and honourable access to her children.' I found his history of her expenses and extravagance, to be untrue; and that even while he made that complaint, he had detained all her wardrobe, jewellery, and books, in short, every article of her personal property, under threat of selling them. I advised that these things should be given up; but Mr Norton would not consent to do so. I told him frankly, I did not think he ought ever to have retained them. I found Mrs Norton had offered to pay her own bills, and that Mr Norton's solicitor had replied, that there was no undertaking, even if she did pay her bills, that her property should be returned to her. I found, under Mr Norton's own handwriting, confessions of the grossest personal violence towards his wife; and that on one occasion he had kicked the drawing-room door from its hinges, and dragged her out of the room by force—she being then enceinte of her youngest son. I wrote to him to say, that, in spite of these injuries (supported by the clearest proof under his own handwriting) I found Mrs Norton 'reasonable'—'tractable'—'very forbearing, indeed, in her expressions towards him,'—anxious to satisfy him, 'for the children's sake'; writing to me, instead of abusing him, that she desired 'heartily, vainly, and sorrowfully, to be at peace with her children's father.' I found that the taking away of those children, had been the real ground of quarrel; and that not only Mr Norton threw the blame of the subsequent trial on his advisers, and declared that the trial was brought 'against his judgment&apos' but that one of his angriest grounds of complaint against his wife was, that she had said she 'never would return to him'; that, as he expressed it, she did not 'honestly intend to return to him,' when he asked her; that his sister and other friends had told him so: in answer to which complaint I wrote him word, that Mrs Norton did intend to have returned, but admitted she
