Having survived Lord Byron, I feel increased reluctance to advert to any circumstances connected with the period of my marriage; nor is it now my intention to disclose them further than may be indispensably requisite for the end I have in view.

Self-vindication is not the motive which actuates me to make this appeal, and the spirit of accusation is unmingled with it; but when the conduct of my parents is brought forward in a disgraceful light by the passages selected from Lord Byron's letters, and by the remarks of his biographer, I feel bound to justify their characters from imputations which I know to be false.

The passages from Lord Byron's letters, to which I refer, are,--the aspersion on my mother's character (p.648, l.4): {70a} "My child is very well and flourishing, I hear; but I must see also.

I feel no disposition to resign it to the contagion of its grandmother's society." The assertion of her dishonourable conduct in employing a spy (p.645, l.7, etc.): "A Mrs.C.( now a kind of housekeeper and spy of Lady N's), who, in her better days, was a washerwoman, is supposed to be--by the learned--very much the occult cause of our domestic discrepancies." The seeming exculpation of myself in the extract (p.646), with the words immediately following it, "Her nearest relations are a---;" where the blank clearly implies something too offensive for publication.

These passages tend to throw suspicion on my parents, and give reason to ascribe the separation either to their direct agency, or to that of "officious spies" employed by them.