PREFACE. I HOPE that those who do me the honour of perusing these Letters will not take them for more than they are worth, a simple, and, I trust, faithful record of impressions as they arose, and incidents as they occurred, such as I conceived would be read with interest at home. In preparing them for the press, I have divested them of much that could possess no general interest. If certain allusions to members of my family circle have been allowed to stand, it is only because they arose so naturally out of the circumstances, that they serve to illustrate them, or that, in one or |