vey this, shall happen to name the writer, it will appear to you as from the hand of a perfect stranger. Nor can I be sure you will not say that the case might just as well have been actually so, for any interest you can now feel in recalling to mind that you did once know such a person as J. Foster. One has, on some occasions in the long course of life, felt one could say, with perfect consciousness of truth, what one could not reasonably expect to be believed—all appearances being so directly to the contrary. The present is such a one; so that I shall have no just cause to complain, if my declaration [is doubted] that, ever since I left Ireland to this hour, I have retained a very grateful remembrance of my old friend Mr. Purser, and of his family; concerning whom I have inquired and heard, at intervals, from various persons that I have met with, through the long period of more than thirty years. It would be a vain attempt to explain (and indeed I may justly suppose you would not at all care about any explanation), how then it could have happened that I never, in any instance, gave any token of such regard as I am professing to have constantly felt. Having always been intending to write to you, and not long to delay doing so, I have sometimes thought there was some kind of spell or fatality in the case. In truth there is a certain strange power or tendency in delay to prolong and perpetuate itself. And after it has continued a considerable time, perhaps several years, there comes a feeling, that the matter of character is now quite a lost thing, and that therefore the case can become no worse. Something partly similar has happened with respect to one or two early friends in this country, still living, held always in friendly remembrance, never visited in the remote places of their abode, and their last letters, of a date indefinitely far in the past, remaining unanswered. But this case respecting my two Irish friends (the senior and the junior), is by much the worst in my long but unimportant history. The mortification it causes me is such, that I could almost wish to be able to introduce myself—not as an ancient friend, little deserving to be remembered as such, but as a person who has just been very much interested in hearing a particular account of you from a lady, whose sister has been with you within the last year, and who gave such an account of you that I thought I should have been much gratified to be acquainted with such a family. It recalled to my imagination once again, with a vivid freshness, the interesting social scenes and circumstances of a period lying on the ascent of life, on the other side as it were, of a mountain which I have long since passed over, and am now descending as my old friend also is, far down toward the low, last tract of life. But the images so revived (which, however, have never faded), were in strong contrast, in many essential points, with those presented by the description of what I should find if I were in the same scene again. One important and estimable member of the family removed from the world; a younger one long since grown up, and placed in family relations far off from you; another, once my young friend and pupil, now in middle age, doubly a family man, and active in a sphere of business and various cares,-all this is so vastly different from the picture in my mind, that I have no power of thought to pass the one into the other, so as to realize this later form of the scene to my imagination. As to myself, you are not likely to have heard anything scarcely of the course of my life, marked by none but common occurrences. Since I saw Ireland I have spent several years in some, and many years in other, parts of England; in Sussex-near London-near Bristol-at Frome-at a remote place high up in Gloucestershire-and lastly, near ten years again near Bristol, to which last place I have always retained a partiality ever since I was at the academy there in my youth. In two of these places of residence I was for a considerable time a settled preacher as we call it,—at one of them, at two periods distant from each other; but in each instance was compelled to give in, by some kind of debility in the parts about the throat which rendered the constantly recurring exercise of public speaking difficult and painful. Always, however, up to this time, I have continued to preach occasionally. Just twenty years I have been a married man, with great cause to be happy in that connection. . . . . We have two daughters, our only surviving children; a son who would have been now eighteen, died last year of consumption. I have great reason to be pleased at having had my lot cast, temporarily, in a variety of situations, though with no very remarkable events in any of them; since this has given me the opportunity and advantage of seeing more of the nature of things and men, than I might if fixed during the main part of life in one place. I am now in the fifty-eighth year, and feel very sensible monitions of approach to old age, especially in the decay of sight, and something in that of memory. CXLVII. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. September, 1827. I have cause to sympathize with your emotions in remembrance of one whom you see on earth no more; it being this week of last year that I resigned my only son. A day or two since, when left in solitude, I went up to an unoccupied room where a number of things that were his are put away; and opened once again, a box where various chemical articles remain exactly in the order in which his own hands placed them;--and thought of him as now in another world, with the questions rising again-Where? oh where? In what manner of existence? Amidst what scenes, and revelations, and society? With what remembrances of this world and of us whom he has left behind in it? Questions so often breathed, but to which no voice replies. What a sense of wonder and mystery overpowers the mind,-to think that he who was here, whose last look, and words, and breath, I witnessed,— whose eyes I closed, whose remains are mouldering in the earth not far hence, should actually be now a conscious intelligence, in another economy of the universe! Such thoughts have numberless times come in solemn shade over your mind; but sometimes they have come in brightness. We have the delightful confidence that our departed sons have now infinitely the advantage of us; and that they are trusting in the divine mercy in Jesus Christ for us, that we shall one day reach their happy abodes, never again to suffer a separation. And now a year has been taken from the diminishing interval between our losing them in death, and recovering them, I trust, in immortality. It is an all-wise and all-gracious power that presides over the appointment of those who remain to us. Not less in wisdom and goodness will it be, if he shall withdraw from us yet another, or another of those who remain to us. Nevertheless, I will hope that such a visitation is not approaching you. I should be gratified to hear that the one you are at present so anxiously watching for is recovering to a less endangered state. CXLVIII. TO BENJAMIN STOKES, ESQ. March 10, 1828. MY DEAR SIR,-There seems to be a gloomy shade hovering over my mind since I received W's letter on Saturday. The image, as now lifeless, of the man that I have so often seen in the highest health and spirits, is continually presenting itself. And many times, these two days, the social scenes of his house, where I have repeatedly been received in so very kind a manner, have come with vividness to my memory. The extreme suddenness seems almost to disable the mind to realize the fact in thought. The idea of his moving rapidly on, in vigorous life to a certain spot, to one precise point, and on coming exactly thither, being, as in a moment, in another world, renders the mystery of death still more intense. And there being nothing to excite the slightest anticipation, when he set out on the journey, when he came within a mile-within a few steps of the fatal point! How true the saying, that "in the midst of life we are in death!" It must have been an almost overwhelming shock, which each of his near relations, but above all his wife, would feel on receiving the messenger or the letter that brought the sad information. W intimated an apprehension of serious danger to her, on account of a frail and sinking state of health. But I hope she will not be the victim of the first dreadful emotions, or the subsequent distress and sadness. The younger portion of his family have, in their lively age, the power that counteracts in due time, the pressure of sorrow. It must appear to you all a strange and affecting circumstance, that the son, the brother, the husband, the father that was, a few days since, is now no more in any of those relations, no more to be conversed with, and, after a few days, to be seen no more on earth. I join in the wish which will be felt by you all, that this solemn event may be rendered salutary to the best interests of those who suffer so mournful a visitation. I feel very sensibly the kindness of your renewed invitation at this season of sorrow. I could not hesitate if the circumstances, as I will plainly describe them, did not put upon me what I think you will acknowledge to be an absolute compulsion. I say not a word about what I did mention, for one thing, in my reply to W, the return of that incommodious affection under which I suffered at Bourton, when I had the pleasure of seeing you there. It is a very inconvenient attendant on travelling and visiting; but I think it is beginning to yield a little to the application of what was so kindly sent me by Miss B. At any rate I would not, after your letter, let that prevent my seeing you at the time I had engaged. It is this matter of Dr. Marshman's that forms the iron of the bondage. The case stands thus. He has found his ugly task, partly from the complication and extent of subjects involved in it, vastly more toilsome and tedious than he calculated; and now he is receiving letters day after day from friends in different quarters, expressing wonder what he can be about, telling him that he is leaving them without competent means to act efficiently as his advocates. He is therefore become painfully anxious to get the article, or rather the first and larger half of it, out very soon. As to what himself has now remaining to be done, he might dispense with any assistance I can give him. But the thing is that I have been inveigled into undertaking to write something in the way of preface, in my own name; and it has unfortunately spread into such prolixity, that it cannot now be brought to a decent ending, short of the length of a long sermon. A portion of it remains yet to be composed, and the whole of it to be (I dare say) tediously revised, transcribed, and seen through the press. My experience certifies me that this is impossible to be done within the short interval before the time that I had so confidently promised myself to see you at Worcester. And the interposition of a week of delay at this juncture would really be a very serious injury to the pressing interests of one of the best men, as I certainly believe, on earth, and combined with his the interests of Serampore. If I were to say I must go to Worcester, he is too unassuming by far to remonstrate, but he would feel extreme regret; and he is half jaded and oppressed to death already, between the tedious labor and the grievous and harassing nature of what he has been about. In addition to the disagreeable task on my hands, I must find time, if I can, to answer several of the letters which I too have received on the business. This, my dear Sir, is the simple truth of the case. You will partly see the stress of it, but cannot in the same degree in which I am made sensi ble of it from being implicated in it. I presume that your sister and Mr. Easthope are with you, or at the house of mourning-emphatically such. I shall sympathize with you on the melancholy scene which is probably yet to come. How differently will the house, the gardens, the church, and above all the family, appear from what they have ever done before! I will not conclude without saying that I promise myself to see you at a little distance, I hope, further on in the spring-if indeed the event that darkens to you this period of the spring, did not warn against all confidence in projects for to-morrow. CXLIX. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. Stapleton, August 16, 1828. So your old war against London, in firm alliance, too, with Mrs. Hill, is to end in submission. . Mrs. Hill and the young people have done wisely to take an indemnification beforehand in North Wales, for what is sacrificed in the way of nature's fine things by the surrender of Cornwall, perhaps the final surrender in respect to residence; for if you get reconciled to London, there is circuit for you after circuit, at only two or three miles distance at each remove, and still again and again the same round, till you get up to the patriarchal age of old Wesley himself. Adieu therefore now to coasts, hills, rills, and everything of that kind; henceforward it is to be, streets, smoke, fogs, and the Thames. But I hope the benefit to friend John will compensate for the difference. . . . . I never did or could like that barbusiness for him, but as it is apparently his fate, he will be very properly desirous to bring all attainable qualifications into convergence upon it. How it would please me and vex you, if he should, after all, turn Methodist preacher, or tutor of a Methodist academy-if Baptist, better still; instead of going to lose his conscience, and perhaps morals too, among a set of the most unprincipled fellows on the earth. . . There is little to be said about myself. For the last two or three months I have lost almost wholly, and I am now convinced finally, the use of one ear, from no known or conjecturable cause, and without any sort of pain. A cough which has continued as much as eight months, became, five or six weeks since, so serious and even menacing in its symptoms, in consequence of a little cold, and again another little cold, with no due care taken about a remedy, that I have been compelled to take the character of a valetudinarian and patient during the last month, have rarely gone out of the house-have not ventured to Bristol for more than a month-have taken physic, a blister on the chest, and so forth. The evil is much mitigated, but not thoroughly removed. What is called "change of air" is strongly recommended, and accor |