PREFACE.
xi
change my tone. The time is indeed arrived, when I have been promised by "the Honourable Men" who, nine years ago, undertook to see that my family obtained the provision their grandfather designed for them,—that "all should be well, all should be settled." But still I am condemned to feel the "hope delayed that maketh the heart sick." Still to receive—not a repetition of promises indeed—but of scorn and insult, when I apply to those gentlemen, who, though they acknowledge that all impediments to a division of the estate they have undertaken to manage, are done away—will neither tell me when they will proceed to divide it, or whether they will ever do so at all. You know the circumstances under which I have now so long been labouring; and you have done me the honour to say, that few Women could so long have contended with them. With these, how-
