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union sprang a very respectable family, the Yonges of ———shire, who are still of some consequence in that county. This scrap of genealogy I should probably have been unacquainted with, but for the circumstance of two original love-letters, interchanged between the parties above-mentioned, during the period of their courtship, and still preserved in the family as antiques. These epistles are written in the most pathetic strain, and, allowing for the age in which they were composed, abound in elegant diction. My grandmother, Dorothy Yonge, married Mr. Lowe, a respectable attorney of the court of King's-Bench, who for many years filled the office of clerk to the warden of the Fleet, and had, besides, a very extensive private practice. The only issue of this marriage was my mother, who was brought up with the most affectionate tenderness, and well educated. By what means she became acquainted with my father, who was from a very distant county, I never learnt; but she was united to him in the year 1781, and, as I have reason to think, against the advice and will of her parents, my father being of a family much less respectable, and, at the time of his marriage, in no higher situation than that of butler and house-steward to Mr. Sumner, a member of parliament, whose estate was situated near Guilford, in Surrey; where my mother, it appears, went to reside after her union, of which I was the first fruits, being born at
