dingly I am going next week, if there be any tolerable alteration of this dolefully wet weather, on a short visit to Worcester, and thence probably to my medical brother-in-law at Bourton. Thence I must come to have the meeting with Dr. Marshman, who will probably not be in this part of the country afterwards. His affair having occupied me during much the greater part of the year, during which I should otherwise have been about other work, and earning a little money in that way, which I war as much as my neighbors; so that I am most miserably in arrear with certain doings which I ought to have been about, and had pledged myself to do my best to perform long since. I am therefore under every kind of obligation to try to do what I can during the descent of the year, after having been defrauded of the best and most genial part of it. Besides the usual grievance and distress which I always experience in any mental labor, there is the painful addition, that latterly my eyes are in such a state of weakness and uneasiness, that I can read very little, and am all the worse off for even thinking. Every day, and almost every hour, I am forcibly reminded, that life is fast coming toward the dregs— and will, ere long, come to its conclusion. At the same time, I have less of the former complaint of the stomach. . . This impossibility of reading enough to be of any use (from the state of my eyes), exacerbates my mortification for the folly of having accumulated so many now useless books. .... While writing the above, with the intention of despatching this sheet by to-day's post, I was somewhat chagrined by a note introducing a gentleman of the Caledonian kirk, a stranger from the neighborhood of Stirling, but luckily a mortal foe to all episcopacy; a man of large in formation, of large travelling, and modest to the last degree. I have been much pleased with him, and now return to my writing. . . Hall was lately saying that there must infallibly be, ere long, a great alteration in the constitution of the conference; among other things, that the laymen will either obtain an introduction into it, or will do their best to blow it up. All this notwithstanding, I declare to you once again, that I am always glad to hear of the enlarging extension of the Methodists, from my uniform conviction that (with no small discount for harm) they are on the whole doing great good. .... CL. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. Sept. 13, 1828. Ir would be an irrational presumption to reckon on it, that we and our two inestimable female associates shall all be found on this earth at the end of the six years next to come. Within that period past there has gone away, from each of our little families, one individual that was with us, but whom we shall see no more till after we shall also have passed the dark frontier. The mind sometimes makes an effort to pass that own manner. limit in thought, and look into the mysterious region, to descry the manner of existence of those who did so lately live with us, and in our But we are compelled to retire from the precincts of that scene, in hopeless inquisitiveness and unabated ignorance; but this ignorance will not last long; and meanwhile, how delightful is it to believe, that those our lost ones are in a far happier state than any of us inhabitants of the dust. CLI. TO JOHN PURSER, JUN., ESQ. Sept. 30, 1828. MY DEAR SIR,—I am just returned from an excursion of rather pro tracted duration in Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, &c., recommended for the purpose of trying to escape from an obstinate and ill-omened cough. A day or two before I set out I began a letter to you, which I reckoned on sending before I went, but several matters came in the way, and the paper was laid aside, in an expectation of being back here in little more than a fortnight, instead of, as it happened, nearly three times that length of absence. A letter, received at Worcester from my wife, informed me that a young gentleman, your son, had been here. I regretted having thus been prevented seeing him, and still more so, on now hearing her description of the intelligent and manly character apparent in the transient visitor. But your son, a young man of mature age,-I seem to be unable to realize the fact; all my ideas fix on yourself, as a youth very much in minority of age, and I cannot carry on my imagination, through the succession of events from that period, so long past, to the present state of your condition. My dear friend, your shrewdness will have perceived, how I am contriving to slide into the letter, without accounting first for the long silence since I received yours, which, with your father's, gave me the most animated gratification. But for explaining--that cannot be, that is quite impossible, unless you could (and you cannot) shape to yourself a conception of such a disease of procrastination, as you never saw exemplified, in any equal degree, in any person whom you can have had within your habitual and prolonged observation. To be sure it is a moral disease, but it has clung to me with all the tenacity of a natural and constitutional one. I will, however, repeat, with what a strong emotion of pleasure I received the communications from Dublin, a pleasure which I certainly intended to express without delay. Some mortification I acknowledge mingled with the pleasure. The warm kindness of my old friends had the effect of giving edge to my self-accusation; and this, in truth, however perversely, operated somewhat concurrently with the tendency of the disease of which I have been complaining; but now I am recognized as an old friend, and will gratefully take my position accordingly. I will try to place myself, as now an old man, near you, now a man in middle age, but appearing to me, whether I will or not, and however I may strive to change the aspect and situation, in the image of a youth of fifteen, nothing less than seeing you will set me right; and as my remembrance of you, and of our diversified intercourse at that time, are among the most distant of the things that remain with me from the long past, I am certain I should, in the event of seeing you, have to combat with a very strange confusion of ideas, and that the one person would very obstinately for a long time, be two; indeed, perhaps always. It would, however, be very interesting to me to hear from you very minutely, as means of identification, the long history of the progress of events during the blank interval of so large a breadth of time. I should recount, to see whether or how much you recollected in coincidence with me, a number of the particulars, the adventures, the debates, the juvenile fancies, which stand representative in my mind, of the young friend of a third part of a century back. It would be highly interesting to me to see your family, and you in the midst of them, and Mrs. Purser, whom I so well recollect as Miss Allen, who did not much like me, at which I am far from wondering; and, indeed, think she was considerably in the right, for certainly I was a queer article in those times. I can recollect what an indifferent figure I cut in divers respects and situations. I should be much amused to recall some of them with her, if she had any marked remembrance of any of them. But, my good friend, neither did she, at that time, much like you; and it would have seemed an extremely improbable event, that you should ever have become united in the most intimate relation of life. I was pleased at hearing, last summer, that a thing so unlikely had actually come to pass, and am happy to believe I may most justly congratulate you both; and I most cordially wish you may very long contribute to each other's happiness. It is gratifying that you appear to have cause for so much satisfaction in viewing your family; when I see so many parents, on every hand, afflicted with apprehension and sorrow on account of their children; insomuch that I have acquired a feeling which (tacitly perhaps) congratulates parents on the early removal of their children by death. This is not from any painful experience of my own. . . . . My eldest, who would now have been a young man of about nineteen, died of consumption two years since; and left the consolation of an assured hope that he is removed to a higher, happier region. He had previously been, though with very minor faults, an object of considerable solicitude, in consideration of what a world of temptation he was (as it was mistakenly presumed) entering into; a world quite dreadful in its aspect on the character and destinies of young men. He departed in humble, pious hope, and I have never wished him here again-have felicitated him rather on his final escape from all sorrow and sin. . . .... It would be a high gratification to me, to hear those opinions of men and things which you have been forming and maturing throughout the more than thirty years since I saw you: it would be curious and interesting to see how far our general or particular notions, preferences, or aversions, would coalesce, after our having so long passed through different trains and scenes of observation and experience. From the early acuteness and intelligence, of which I have so perfect a recollection, I am sure you cannot have failed to be a keen observer and independent thinker, whilst a vast variety of moral phenomena have passed before your view. Your early sentiments were forming to a cast not greatly varying from my own; and I cannot help flattering myself that we should, in many points, find ourselves at this time in agreement, even after so immensely long a dissociation. Have you taken a considerable or a lively interest, in political events and subjects? if so, you have suffered a long course of grievous mortifications, especially in relation to your own country; and in what a fearful state is that country at this hour! I cannot be sure, but am strongly inclined to presume, that you think the whole system of the governinent respecting it, bears a character of absolute infatuation; that a "lying spirit" has prompted and directed all their councils and with such a ministry as we have now, for a judgment sent on the nation, it is gloomy, and, indeed, quite dreadful, to look forward to the course and issue of things in Ireland. .... You have lately had, in Dublin, Dr. Marshman. . . . . That Serampore affair has, during the last twelve months, occupied my time and attention to a very self-sacrificing extent; and, I am afraid, to very little useful purpose. . . . After reading the principal of these opponent publications, I have to say, that my opinion is modified in some points. For one thing, as to the alienation or hostility between the seniors and the junior missionaries; the testimony thus produced of the feelings of so many of these latter does lead me to believe that the fault was not so wholly on their side as Dr. M. represents, and certainly thinks. At the same time it is to be considered that all this is their own story, that they went to India with no proper information, and with expectations which were necessarily disappointed, and that many of the circumstances stated in accusation are such (I know that some are such) as the seniors could so state as to turn the accusation on the juniors. Yet I admit the impression that in some degree, not possible to be precisely assigned, there was cause to complain of the manner in which the seniors exercised, in some particulars, their rightful ascendency. Another thing to be admitted is, that the coalescence, the unanimity of sentiment among the three seniors, has not been so perfect and entire as had been supposed, while substantially and generally, they have, beyond all question, coincided in sentiment, purpose, and plan of proceeding. But how carelessly, indiscreetly, and sometimes inconsistently, they have each and all (the three) written to their friends, at various times! But these dis crepancies are the produce of a ransack of (I have heard) 700 letters and papers. What might not be the result of such a ransack for such an exclusive purpose, of any three associated men's writings during nearly thirty years' co-operation? Another point which these documents show, somewhat more plainly and strongly than Dr. M. had stated, is, that in the indigested and undefined state of their early notions of their situation, relatively to the society, they had not come to a distinct and positive principle of independence till after a very considerable advance of time. . . . . But their solid ground on this question is, that from nearly the beginning they acted independently in all manner of ways, and in very important and even hazardous matters, in which they practically held themselves under no control of the society, not seeking either its assistance or its counsel. But these are minor matters, which, however, as I foresaw, would be labored against the Serampore men, to keep out of sight the great substance and mass of their achievements and merits, namely, that they have most indefatigably labored for nearly thirty years for the Christian service, that they have faithfully expended all they have acquired in every way in and upon that service, and that finally they have nothing for themselves-excepting still to labor, through the remainder of life, whether through "evil report" or "good report." But for this obtrusive and endless topic, I should have said something in express answer and acknowledgment to my old, excellent, and always dear friend, your father. . . . He and I, I do certainly believe, are the same men that we were almost an age since; but doubtless we should, if we met, feel mutual and strange wonder to see the operation of time. We shall not long now remain under that operation. Eternity is beginning to throw on us its mysterious gleams, through the growing shades of our evening life. I wish to express-I will not say my respects, but my friendly regards to your wife, the Miss Allen (it certainly must be so) of long since times. . . . . It is affecting information that my old friend and companion, H. Strahan, is no more. Yours, most truly and cordially, J. FOSTER. CLII. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL. December 15, 1828. For the evenings, I have been a prisoner all the autumn, and must be all the winter-rigorously so. A cold and cough, confirmed from time to time, last winter and spring, has been partially removed by the whole fine summer; during which I took more than a month's excursion, in parts of Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, and Herefordshire, under the most favorable auspices possible of weather, hospitable friends, and care, avoidance of all evening parties, and exemptions from public |