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had often talked of allowing ourselves that indulgence; but we were not privy to the event, which was to have communicated to it an incalculable value. The engraving here given, though it might well be taken to represent a much older child, is from a very beautiful miniature, painted by Paye, when Thomas was not quite two years old. He then was only beginning to speak; but there was even at that early period an intelligence in his eye, and an expression about his mouth, which are, I hope, sufficiently characterised in the delineation, to afford no inadequate idea of his physiognomy.
There is a circumstance, to which I cannot but allude, and need do no more. The trick of converting confidential correspondence, private history, or domestic events, to marketable purposes, has been practised of late years with little remorse, and in open defiance of all prejudice on the side of decency. Yet to drag the privacy of a wife or a child into day-light, and expose to an inquisitive world scenes which