While I remained in England, we corresponded every post; and all the while I used the sea afterwards, I constantly kept up the practice of writing two or three times a week, (if weather and business permitted,) though no conveyance homeward offered for six or eight months together. My packets were usually heavy; and as not one of them at any time miscarried, I have to the amount of near two hundred sheets of paper now lying in my bureau of that correspondence. I mention this little relief I contrived to soften the intervals of absence, because it had a good effect beyond my first intention. It habituated me to think and write upon a great variety of subjects; and I acquired, insensibly, a greater readiness of expressing myself than I should have otherwise attained. As I gained more ground in religious knowledge, my letters became more serious; and, at times, I still find an advantage in looking them over; especially as they remind me of my many providential incidents, and the state of my mind at different periods in these voyages, which would otherwise have escaped my me

mory.

I sailed from L-in August 1750, commander of a good ship. I have no very extraordinary events to recount from this period, and shall therefore contract my memoirs, lest I become tedious; yet I am willing to give you a brief sketch of my history down to 1755, the year of my settlement in my present situation. I had now the command and care of thirty persons: I endeavoured to treat then with humanity, and to set them a good example: I likewise established public worship, according to the liturgy, twice every Lord's day, officiating myself. Further than this I did not proceed, while I continued in that employment.

Having now much leisure, I prosecuted the study of the Latin with good success. I remembered a dictionary this voyage, and procured two or three other books; but still it was my hap to choose the hardest. I added Juvenal to Horace; and, for prose authors, I pitched upon Livy, Cæsar, and Sallust. You will easily conceive, Sir, that I had hard work, to begin, (where I should have left off,) with Horace and Livy. I was not aware of the difference of style; I had heard Livy highly commended, and was resolved to understand him. I began with the first page and laid down a rule, which I seldom departed from, not to proceed to a second period till I understood the first, and so on. I was often at a stand, but seldom discouraged : here and there I found a few lines quite obstinate, and was forced to break in upon my rule, and give them up, especially as my edition had only the text, without any notes to assist me. But there were not many such ; for before the close of that voyage, I could, (with a few exceptions,) read Livy from end to end, almost as readily as an English author. And I found, in surmounting this difficulty, I had surmounted all in one. Other prose authors, when they came in my way, cost me little trouble. In short, in the space of two or three voyages, I became tolerably acquainted with the best classics, (I put all I have to say upon this subject together ;) I read Terrence, Virgil, and several pieces of Cicero, and the modern classics, Buchanan, Erasmus, and Cassimir. At length I conceived a design of becoming Ciceronian myself, and thought it would be a fine thing indeed to write pure and elegant Latin. I made some essays towards it, but by this time the Lord was pleased to draw me nearer to himself, and to give me a fuller view of the "pearl of great price," the in

estimable treasure hid in the field of the holy Scripture; and, for the sake of this, I was made willing to part with all my new-acquired riches. I began to think that life was too short, (especially my life,) to admit of leisure for such elaborate trifling. Neither poet nor historian could tell me a word of Jesus, and I therefore applied myself to those who could. The classics were at first restrained to one morning in the week, and at length quite laid aside. I have not looked in Livy these five years, and I suppose I could not now well understand him. Some passages in Horace and Virgil I still admire; but they seldom come in my way. I prefer Buchanan's Psalms to a whole shelf of Elzevirs. -But thus much I have gained, and more than this I am not solicitous about, so much of the Latin as enables me to read any useful or curious book that is published in that language. About the same time, and for the same reason that I quarrelled with Livy, I laid aside the mathematics.-I found they not only cost me much time, but engrossed my thoughts too far; my head was literally full of schemes. I was weary of cold contemplative truths, which can neither warm nor amend the heart, but rather tend to aggrandize self. I found no traces of this wisdom in the life of Jesus, or the writings of Paul. I do not regret that I have had some opportunities of knowing the first principles of these things but I see much cause to praise the Lord that he inclined me to stop in time; and, whilst I was "spending my labours for that which is not bread," was pleased to set before me "wine and milk without money and without price."

My first voyage was fourteen months, through various scenes of danger and difficulty, but nothing very remarkable; and, as I intend to be more particular

:

with regard to the second, I shall only say, that I was preserved from every harm and having seen many fall on my right hand and on my left, I was brought home in peace, and restored to where my thoughts had been often directed, November 2, 1751.

January 22, 1763.

I am, &c.

LETTER XII.

Dear Sir,

I ALMOS

ALMOST wish I could recall my last sheet, and retract my promise. I fear I have engaged too far, and shall prove a mere egotist. What have I more that can deserve your notice? However, it is some satisfaction that I am now writing to yourself only; and, I believe, you will have candour to excuse what nothing but a sense of your kindness could extort from me.

Soon after the period where my last closes, that is, in the interval between my first and second voyage after my marriage, I began to keep a sort of diary; a practice which I have since found of great use. I had in this interval repeated proofs of the ingratitude and evil of my heart. A life of ease, in the midst of my friends, and the full satisfaction of my wishes, was not favourable to the progress of grace, and afforded cause of daily humiliation. Yet, upon the whole, I gained ground. I became acquainted with books, which gave me a further view of Christian doctrine and experience; particularly, Scougal's Life of God in the Soul of Man, Hervey's Meditations, and the Life of Colonel Gardiner. As to preaching, I heard none but the common sort, and had hardly an idea of any better; neither had

I the advantage of Christian acquaintance. I was likewise greatly hindered by a cowardly reserved spirit; I was afraid of being thought precise; and though I could not live without prayer, I durst not propose it even to my wife, till she herself first put me upon it; so far was I from those expressions of zeal and love, which seem so suitable to the case of one who has had much forgiven. In a few months the returning season called me abroad again, and I sailed from L, in a new ship, July, 1752.

A sea-faring life is necessarily excluded from the benefit of public ordinances and Christian communion: but, as I have observed, my loss upon these heads was at this time but small. In other respects, I know not any calling that seems more favourable, or affords greater advantages to an awakened mind, for promoting the life of God in the soul; especially to a person who has the command of a ship, and thereby has it in his power to restrain gross irregularities in others, and to dispose of his own time; and still more so in African voyages, as these ships carry a double proportion of men and officers to most others, which made my department very easy; and, excepting the hurry of trade, &c. upon the coast, which is rather occasional than constant, afforded me abundance of leisure. To be at sea in these circumstances, withdrawn out of the reach of innumerable temptations, with opportunity and a turn of mind disposed to observe the wonders of God in the great deep, with the two noblest objects of sight, the expanded heavens, and the expanded ocean, continually in view; and where evident interpositions of Divine Providence, in answer to prayer, occur almost every day these are helps to quicken and confirm the life of faith, which in a good measure supply to a reli