“Be this your wall of brass, no _guilt_ to know Nor let one _crime_ sit blushing on your brow.” His letters to his children are charming in their simplicity and tenderness. Here is one of them: “My dear Children,—I am extremely delighted with your very great progress in writing, and am only anxious on that subject that you will not forget what you have been taught. But my great and increasing care is about your progress in the acquisition of industrious habits. It should be a first principle with people that they should actually _earn_ whatever they _enjoy_. Writing is good and reading is good, but no learning should entitle a person to live by the fruit of another’s industry. Your mother will help you to apply this principle. State your objections to it, if you have any, in your next letter; and show me, if you can, why one part of the community should live by the labours of another.” The longing for his children which had tried to satisfy itself with the sight of their framed likenesses above his mantelpiece, the record of their ages and heights on his wall, was stilled at last on the joyful day which brought him William. The boy’s presence was not procured without sacrifice on his father’s part. The prisoners were allowed a certain amount of wine every day at dinner. This, Neilson saved, and sold privately to some of the prisoners at 3_s._ 6_d._ per bottle which paid for William’s diet, “having agreed for it at £15 per annum.” “I don’t feel the slightest inconvenience from this privation,” he assures his wife, “and though it looks a little awkward to sit at table while others are taking their glass, yet my fellow-prisoners cannot but esteem me the more for the motive; indeed I feel a good deal pinched about the usual expenses of mending, washing, paper, quills, etc., _not having at present a crown in the world_. But then I do not owe a farthing to anyone, and I have learned to make a little go a long way.” From a letter addressed by Neilson to the Governor we learn that he covered the expense of washing, etc., by going without supper. When we remember that Neilson had become addicted, during the convivial days of his political life and the weary days of his imprisonment in Kilmainham and Newgate, to spirituous drink, we realise the extent of the sacrifice he made to secure the presence of his little son. That little lad’s story of the days spent by him with his father in Fort George can be told by no one so well as himself. We must bear in mind that the writer of the following letters was only eight years old. The first letter is to his mother and announces his safe arrival in Fort George: “My dear Mother.—I like this place very well. My father is very well, as are the rest of the prisoners.