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intimacy with some part of our family, paid us a visit of enquiry and condolence. In the course of conversation, this gentleman threw out some distant hints of doubts, which he entertained, as to the nature of the disease. On being urged to explain more fully what he had but covertly insinuated, he gave us to understand it as his opinion, that the ostensible complaints were altogether symptomatic, and that the pressure of water on the brain was the real cause of our child's death. Besides stating several technical reasons, too profound for our ignorance to appreciate, he professed to consider the acknowledged largeness of the head, and even the high talent, in which so many had delighted, as strongly corroborating his own exposition of the case. There was perhaps nothing else within the limits of human ingenuity, which could have added the pang of self-reproach to the natural depression of melancholy. Were we to form our systems on the credibility of such suggestions, who would kill the darling of
