His wife, Mary Gurney, the author of this letter, was the daughter and only child of Richard Hanbury Gurney, a first cousin of John Joseph, and belonging to the elder, wealthier, and representative branch of the race—he, Richard, deceased only within a few years, having been a younger half-brother, and the only one, of the actual head of the Family—the venerable Hudson Gurney, of Keswick, F.R.S., F.A.S., Ex-High Sheriff of Norfolk, etc., etc. Whilst Hudson Gurney it is true inherited principally the patrimonial estates, Richard, his half-brother, became the heir of his own mother, who had been a Miss Hanbury of the wealthy family of London brewers of that name. This fortune, over a million sterling, became at Richard’s death the inheritance of his daughter Mary, the author of this letter, now about twenty-eight years of age, and the mother of two or three children. Samuel Gurney the eminent banker and philanthropist was a brother of John Joseph, and Mrs. Elizabeth Fry, whose labors and sacrifices to improve the discipline of the great prisons on both continents have won her a name to be envied, was his sister. Another sister was the wife, and zealous assistant, of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, celebrated in the annals of British Emancipation. Mrs. Gurney is thus allied by descent and marriage with families of the first note both in Europe and America, and holds in her own right an almost princely estate. She was constantly, up to the very period of her departure, anticipated in her lightest wish by a husband who knew no will but her own. With such surroundings, elevating her to the very highest sphere of English social life, with all its splendors and attractions, and securing to her the enjoyment of every rational pleasure, after thirteen years of married life, she voluntarily renounced her husband, her children and family, not in any moment of passion, but through a calm conviction of reason, as she herself states, and left England, the mistress of a common groom from her stables. There can be no pardon nor extenuation for this great social crime. But the motives which led to it are well worthy of the reader’s patient consideration. They are stated in her letter with logical precision, and at the same time with the apparent enthusiasm and tenderness of a heart which had suffered and loved intensely; and whatever the explanation, whether deducible from an exaggeration of facts, or an artful use of language, her words really seem to be stamped with the seal of social martyrdom. Whilst the general tenor of the doctrines she enunciates cannot fail to administer a shock to every healthy mind, it is not necessary for the cause of morality, and it would be unjust indeed, to denounce her letter _in toto_. Every authentic history of personal experience forms a helpful addition for the guidance and behavior of mankind.