called upon by duty to make, may be inferred from the following letter addressed to him, with whom the contemplated union had now, she felt, become impossible. The handwriting gives painful evidence of the agitation of mind and weakness of body amidst which it was composed. Its insertion is permitted here, at the request of her surviving relative, and of the writer to whom she confided the trust of doing justice to her memory. It must be received as the only explanation that can be offered of the feelings by which she was animated, and of the grounds on which she decided.

"I have already written to you two notes which I fear you could scarcely read or understand. I am to-day sitting up for an hour, and though strictly forbidden to write, it will be the least evil. I wish I could send you my inmost soul to read, for I feel at this moment the utter powerlessness of words. I have suffered for the last three days a degree of torture that made Dr. Thomson say, 'you have an idea of what the rack is now.' It was nothing to what I suffered from my own feelings. I look back on my whole life—I can find nothing to justify my being the object of such pain—but this is not what I meant to say. Again I repeat, that I will not allow you to consider yourself bound to me by any possible tie. To any friend to whom you may have stated our engagement, I cannot object to your stating the truth. Do every justice to your own kind and generous conduct. I am placed in a most cruel and difficult position. Give me the satisfaction of, as far as rests with myself, having nothing to reproach myself with. The more I think, the more I feel I ought not—I cannot—allow you—to unite yourself with one ac-