But what most people will think the most delightful thing in the letters are the pictures they give of the children. As has been already mentioned, the three elder were with their parents in Fort George, and almost all the State prisoners were lending a hand, each in his own speciality, to their education. The accounts of their progress interests their grandmother keenly, and she helps with comments on their dispositions as she had studied them. She is proud of Elizabeth’s beauty and goodness of disposition, of Margaret’s shrewdness of observation, and liberality and directness in dealing; but “the tenderness of Robert’s tones and the brightness of his countenance give him the advantage over all the other children whatever.” It is easy to see that Robert is his grandmother’s favourite, dear as all the children are to her. A letter from him gives her “great pleasure, for it is a true picture of his heart, overflowing with innocence, honesty, and good nature.” She begs for “minute accounts of the three children ...,” she and her husband “being glad to feed upon crumbs that fall from her son’s table.” In return she is almost as minute as her son and daughter-in-law could wish about the three from whom they are separated. She draws a funny little sketch of the “little fellow,” two-year-old Christopher Temple, “fighting hard in dumb show for his share in his grandfather’s claret,” and a little later on “engaging in his elder brother’s plays, and forcing himself into notice more than the others.” John is the other grandmother’s favourite, and Tom is pronounced by Ally Spring “the finest child you have,” but “the little fellow,” as Elizabeth always calls the baby namesake of her dead first-born, is of all the three confided to her care the nearest to her heart. We must, however, reserve further quotations from the letters, as far as they regard her grandchildren, until we come to discuss their education, at some length, in our memoir of their mother.