68 



since that the criticism of certain persons is praise. 

 I arn sure you are my friend. I know you have a 

 heart open to sympathy. It is to you alone I can 

 mention these circumstances, and alleviate no incon- 

 siderable degree of pain to my mind. I have a fine 

 little boy, who on the 25th of March will be two 

 years old : he has a sister, now near the age of six 

 months, who promises health and strength. You 

 cannot conceive what anxiety I feel when I reflect 

 that these interesting objects of my attachment are 

 strangers on the earth, strangers in the country of 

 their birth, and in the native land of their father ; — 

 how, with all the pleasure I experience from the 

 gradual progress of my boy, 1 regret that his first 

 ideas are not expressed in English. Hitherto it is 

 in vain that I speak to him almost every day of his 

 father's best friend. He will answer me with un- 

 common feeling, Je Valine bien ton bon ami, papa, 

 ou est il? «/<? voudrois bien le voir Mr. Smif. It is 

 always Smif; and perhaps I shall never hear him 

 say Smith. 



" When I look forward I am lost in sadness ; the 

 desolation of the times in which we live is fit also 

 to inspire melancholy. It should seem (I wish I 

 may be in error) that England is running headlong 

 to her ruin. Almost all I have is in the English 

 funds, and I am not quite easy on that head. This 

 country, as every other, is so affected by these dis- 

 astrous wars, that the price of every necessary of 

 life is doubled, and moreover we have almost to 

 fear a famine. 



" Our bread is much inferior to what it is in less 



