MRS YELVERTON.

Southland Times, Volume I, Issue 37, 17 March 1863, Page 2

MRS YELVERTON.

The CaUdanian Mercury has commenced the publication of the correspondence between Major Yflverton and Miss Longworth, with an introduction and explanatory notes by the hon; Mrs Yelverton. In the introduction Mrs YelTertonsays: — "These letters were written in blissful ignorance of law proceedings, and without any conception on my part of the possibility of a marriage being other than a marriage. I had learnt in my catechism that marriage 'is a sacrament, 1 nothing else. They were conceived in that earnest trustfulness •which sheds the brightest halo round the dawn of life — in the guileless unconsciousness of the very evils which they have been distorted to suggest. Shakspeare, could he arise and read his commentators, would not be more astonished thun I have been upon learning the interpretations put upon what I wrote. The Frenchman's translation of the witch's salute — ' Hail ! all hailP — grele, toujours grele — because it always snows in Scotland — was a slight mistake in comparison with the assumption that two persons, deeply attached to each other, met in a church, knelt down at the altar, whilst the officiating minister performed the marriage service — for the express and absolute purpose of not becoming husband and wife. Hence, amidst a hornet's nest of commentators, friendly bunglers, crochelty and one idea'd sympathisers, foul insinuators, and hoary-headed malignants — desecration and stupidity have done their utmost. 1 have been reft of all I held precious on earth. Not a phase of my life which has not been metamorphosed. Even the soft twilight which hangs over ihe past has been made murk and dr? ar. From my very childhood, and its dreamy recollections of the lace of my idolised mother, to the last hours of husband's tenderness, there is not a spot in which the rank weeds of calumny have not been planted. As from a vessel laden with precious gems and treasure, overtaken by a tempest, all has been sacrificed and cast overboard. Still, though human life is precious, still more precious is honor. I I stand alone, with the wild, pitiless waves of all that is evil dashing around me, while only a single plank divides me from the bottomless gulf of utter desolation and shame; but that one slender plank is truth, and my helm is conscious rectitude. Weak human sight of the wisest gazing wistfully, may fail to discern amidst this chaos of contending elements — where thunder-clouds mingle with the roar of waters — what like the struggling barque may be; but the all-seeing eye, penetrating through air, and cloud, and sea, and the mysteries of this life, never loses sight of a single soul that hopes and asks for help. The fact of my case having been pending for four years and a half before one court or another, has placed me under the disadvantage of having the comments of my commentators Tead before my letters themselves. The present being the first lull when there is actually no suit pending before any court, I take the opportunity of affording the public the means of judging for themselves, and ferl confident that the letters, when read continuously, will not be fonnd to justify the opinion that has been formed on them on the strength of isolated sentences and passages that have been torn from the roots and made to bear a meaning which it is plain from the context could never have been intended. I believe the purer the mind of the reader the less evil will be found in them."