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a pain to me to look back upon: even now, the hot agony of resentment and grief rises in my mind, when I think of the needless tyranny I endured in this respect. Mr Norton held my children as hostages; he felt that while he had them, he still had a power over me that nothing could control. Baffled in the matter of the trial and damages, he had still the power to do more than punish—to torture—the wife who had been so anxious to part from him. I never saw them; I seldom knew where they were. Once, when I wrote to ask after them in illness, my letter to the nurse (which contained no syllable of offence, or beyond the subject of my inquiry) was turned inside out, and franked back to me. Miss Vaughan was dead, and I appealed to my mother-in-law (with whom I heard my husband meant to place them), entreating her to refuse to take them; which she promised to do, and heard me with tears of sympathy. But my husband's sister. Lady Menzies decided differently: to her, on payment of so much a head, my three children were consigned; and removed to Scotland, where neither their father nor I could be with them. There, with one whom I knew to be haughty and intemperate, those children were left, who had hitherto been so gently and tenderly treated; and the eldest of whom was delicate in health, sensitive in disposition, and just recovering from illness. The first step she made in their education, was to flog this very child (a child of six years old) for merely receiving and reading a letter from me (I being in England and he in Scotland), to "impress on his memory" that he was not to receive letters from me. Having occasion to correct one still younger, she stripped it naked, tied it to the bed-post, and chastised it with a riding-whip. She was a fit sister and colleague to Mr Norton; and I have lived to see the day when her disputes for money, with her own sons, have come to Scotch law-pleadings; as Mr Norton has brought t0 English law-pleadings the like disputes with us.
These boys having been the gleam of happiness and com-
