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the inside of the coach, and when I got in he was mighty forward, I thought, with his religious books and his religious talk (I being a perfect stranger to him). I somehow betrayed a hint of knowing who the young fellow, his companion, was; and then it came out in curious self-display, who he himself was; and I might have read I know not how many authentic testimonials to his conversion, his reformed character; and I did hear his own account of his highly popular acceptance and efficacy as a preacher. The people crowded and wept to hear him. His imprisonment, he said, was from a cause that did him no dishonor; though in other respects he had, he said, been a wild fellow. His being in such friendly company with that acquitted thief he accounted for on the score of his having been of some signal spiritual use to that thief's father. He would know to what religious class I might belong. Could I, even in such company, repress the vanity of saying, that my chief acquaintance, in that part of the country, was with the Methodists? He did them the honor to applaud them, and thought he should, after a little while, add himself to that noble class, evidently deeming that they ought and would make much of such an ally. He remained in the coach after I mounted the outside, and left it, if I remember, at Carmarthen. I well knew that shrewdness and discretion were at this time at the head of the Methodist Society at Haverford; and certainly wished that those qualities might not be put in abeyance in such a case. He may be a sincere convert (I should say might then, for by this time possibly he is completely the reverse), but he certainly had no right notion of the ground on which a man of his previous conduct ought, for some considerable time to stand. The coachman and guard gaily agreed that he might probably make an excellent trade of his new calling.

CXXII. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL.

I am much interested and pleased with your account of friend John. There truly needed no such ceremony about inducing me to send him a letter. But I am a most incompetent adviser in anything about literary plans and pursuits. On other topics, of more general interest to a young man, I may have gained from experience, observation, and reflection, somewhat of wherewithal for counselling a new adventurer in life and the world. As to the question (for the next ensuing stage of his studies), between mathematics, and a still further occupation with the classics, it would, in my apprehension, turn very much on the estimate of the student's mental character. The mathematics, by all means, for a youth of excessive fancy, ardent sentiment, roving thought, and romantic propensity. To such an one, the sooner the better a process is applied for regulating, cooling, methodizing, consolidating the habits and operations of his mind. But, on the other hand, supposing his imagination and sentiment not yet fully developed; his

perception of what is beautiful, graceful, or sublime, to be somewhat behind his attainments in knowledge and understanding; his taste unmatured; then I should think the more advisable thing to be a longer, full addiction to the studies of ancient poetry and eloquence. One would be very desirous to expand, and warm, and ignite (shall I say), and fertilize the faculties, before applying the process to condense, and square, and constrain, and harden them. You will probably not be at a loss to judge on which of the two sides of John's mental economy there is the greater need of the appropriate application. From so much as I have seen of it, I might be inclined to surmise (with the exception, indeed, of his political fervor), that it is more on the side of what is denominated sentiment, that he wants an addition; and the enlargement of his imagination, the cultivation of his taste, and of the qualities akin to these, might be, for some time to come, the more desirable course. Mathematics, too soon and too much, might have the effect of hardening and maturing the mental fruit before it has received sap enough to swell it out to its full size. But in all this, do not consider me as taking on myself the office of adviser.

If friend James's health shall have attained a tolerable degree of firmness, it would doubtless be a very good thing for him also to go to Scotland. John's assistance and co-operation will be of the greatest use to him. And if it should happen to be that clever and hopeful fellow's peccadillo to be some trifle too self-sufficient, he will find the disposition sensibly checked by seeing something of a great number of other clever fellows, whose attainments it will require many a long laborious exertion to equal. Young M., a youth of great acquirements (chiefly by his own mere exertion), and of great modesty into the bargain, who has been some weeks at home after his first term at Cambridge, says, the most profitable impression made on him on going thither, was that of his own insignificance. ・ ・

CXXIII. TO MR. J. W. HILL.

Stapleton, Feb. 6, 1824.

MY DEAR YOUNG FRIEND JOHN,-A letter some time since from Haverford, gratified me much, among other things, by information about you; the pleasure you feel in your new and remote situation, your studies, and the favor you receive from professor Sandford. In that letter it was added, that I might give some degree of pleasure, both to the Haverford friends and to yourself, by conveying my friendly remembrance to you in the shape of a letter. I was pleased at being told so, notwithstanding that letter-writing is in itself no favorite employment with me. . . . I have a very lively and pleasing remembrance of the great number of social hours spent, with the family altogether, on the hill at Bristol, and of our later talks, saunterings, and rambles in St. Bride's Bay. It is

curious, and almost strange to think, how differently we are now situated in this great triangle, Western Wales, Glasgow, and Bristol. I often regret this prodigious dislocation. But it is the disposition made by Providence, and we have each and all our respective duties to perform, faithfully and diligently, where our lot is cast. I hope we shall all have to remember, both in future time and after all our time is ended, these various stations as scenes where we were not placed in vain; and where we acquired something, and performed something, of never-ending value, both to ourselves and others. I earnestly wish your health may continue uninjured and firm during your studious labors, of your industry and great success in which there is not the smallest cause to doubt, any more than of the high advantage which you will hereafter, if Heaven prolong your life, reap from your attainments. Among us dissenters (and I confidently trust you will always remain faithful to the battalion, in spite of Mr. B.'s example), there is no one thing more urgently wanted (religion out of the question) than a class of vigorously disciplined young scholars, thoroughly accomplished in classical literature especially, and qualified to take a commanding station in the higher departments of education; in seminaries and institutions of all kinds, and especially in those for the literary and intellectual discipline of young preachers, a greater, and still greater number of whom are continuing to be required, as religion and the dissenting interests are continuing to extend. And dissent, you may be sure, will continue to extend, in whatever proportion true religion and free thinking shall do so, to the ultimate abolition of that antichristian nuisance, the established church. But we are hitherto sadly deficient in sound, thorough literary and mental discipline, both our preachers and the respectable and partially cultivated portion of our body. In this view, it is with extreme gratification that I think of a few young men that I know or hear of, who are, I hope, rising up to improve our condition and respectability, in co-operation with others that will be gradually added to the honorable fraternity. The need and importance of such a class is every year becoming more sensibly felt, and every future year their value will be more justly and highly estimated.

I am not, in all this, assuming that you have as yet thought with any considerable definiteness, of plans for your future life; and it is quite time enough yet. But I think it is not impertinent thus early and strongly to represent to you, of what high account, in one wide and most important department, such attainments will be, as you are now in the worthy progress of acquiring. This is, indeed, holding out a prospect of great labor; but what are we in this world for but to labor, to the utmost of our strength, in important service to God and mankind? It is in another world alone, and on no nearer ground, that we can expect to be happy, and illuminated, and exalted in virtue, without labor, in the painful and toilsome sense of that word.

Religious admonitions are too familiar to my young friend to need that

I should dwell on them, except with specific reference to influences and temptations from which your present situation may not be exempt. It is too well known, that in the literary and scientific institutions and society of Scotland, there is a very pervading spirit of scepticism and infidelity. I trust that your mind will be most carefully guarded against this mortal contamination, as well as against all that moral laxity to which it leads, and indeed, from which it very chiefly originates. I hope in heaven that your manhood will display a faithful and practical devotion to that which, from your infancy, you have been instructed to be the highest concern of life, and which very few are deluded and stupified enough at the close of life, not to acknowledge to have been so. How many at last so acknowledge it with grief, and even despair! .

- CXXIV.

TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL.

Stapleton, March 6, 1824.

MY DEAR SIR,—. . The accident you heard of was three or four months since it was slight, though it might have been serious. I was returning from one of the lectures with my sister-in-law, when, a little on this side the turnpike near Baptist Mills, some boy threw a squib or something of that kind across the road, just under the noses of the horses, which instantly started off with such impetuosity, that the reins broke in the man's hand. They took a sweep to the off-side of the road, so as to graze the carriage hard against the high wall, by which the carriage was much damaged, the windows broken, and a piece of the glass struck the side of my face, where a mark is made that will always remain. The man threw himself from the box, with the design to catch hold of one of the horses, but was instantly left in the road, and they gallopped on about half a mile, till they were some way up the long ascent of the Downend road, when they slackened to a slow pace at last, by which time the man rode up, and got before their heads on some horse which he had seized at the door of an inn. There was happily nothing on the road, to be either met or passed. My companion was not hurt at all, and the cut which I received, though of some depth, got well in two or three weeks. It was an occasion for specially acknowledging the care of a merciful Providence.

A few days since at Strong's I gave half-a-crown, I did, I really did, for an old octavo of Wesley on Original Sin; and through about a hundred pages which I have read, he seems to me to talk very much to the purpose; but what on such an estimate of human nature he could do with his Arminianism-his sufficient power in man—I cannot divine; perhaps he will make it all plain somewhere in the book, which I mean to read through, and perhaps more than once.

CXXV. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL.

Stapleton, Sept. 1, 1824.

The consequence of long idleness is such that I am mortified and astounded to find what a difficulty I have even to understand anything I attempt to read of a harder temper than friend Walter Scott's metaphysics. This very morning, in trying at a section of Lowman's "Rational of the Hebrew Ritual," I was obliged to go over the sentences again and again, before I seemed to obtain the smallest notion of what it was all about; and not being honestly able to ascribe the fault to the author, I was willing to divide the blame between myself, and the sluggish, soporific air and heat here. There is a prodigious difference of climate between here and St. Bride's Bay, unless indeed you have by this time experienced a very great change even there. A glorious season, however, for the harvest, which a few more days will complete hereabouts.

Among innumerable things wrong about us, there has, to-day, been at Downend, one thing right, namely, a baptizing of several persons, including a man of very great reading and research, brought up a churchman. There never was an instance, I believe, of more deliberate and conscientious conviction, followed out at the cost of an unmitigable hostility to be endured from his relatives, with whom his circumstances render it necessary for him at present to reside. A young clergyman, of the evangelical class, with whom he has been intimate, had nearly been betrayed into the same predicament, confessing explicitly that he felt ashamed and galled in his conscience in the act of sprinkling [infants], and calling it baptism; but most opportunely and luckily, he has been saved from plunging into the water by the intervention of a young lady of good fortune, and high church temperament.

CXXVI. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL.

1824.

It occurs to me after each time of seeing you, to wonder how silent you are about the "Life of Richard" [Baxter]. I suspect you are by degrees giving up the design, any further than the compilation for Edwards's edition of the works. And to be sure, whenever one looks into any one of his polemical things, one thinks you are right. I do not see how less than a great part of a diligent life would suffice to make out any tolerable scheme and history of his opinions and controversies. And something of that sort would seem to be required, in a grand, comprehensive, well-digested, and final exhibition of his life and character. But to say nothing of the length of time this would take, where can mortal patience be found to work out such a historical analysis? And indeed, after all, what would be the benefit of it? A boundless, endless maze, and wilderness of debatings, projectings, schemings, and dream

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