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The amiable qualities, with which he was endowed, set off his christian graces, and were in turn corrected and regulated by them. The prejudices of those, who disliked his religious principles, were softened, if not subdued, by the frankness, courtesy, and obligingness of his manner. Even his enemies could "find no occasion against him, except concerning the law of his God."

What a contest with the principle of moral evil, as it exists within and without him, does the life of a believer exhibit! what a miracle of divine grace is the preservation of spiritual life in the soul, under circumstances of the utmost disadvantage; an enemy within, temptations and trials without-headed and conducted by an evil spirit, possessed of implacable malice, unwearied industry, immense intelligence, and angelical powers, aided by hosts of fallen spirits subject to his will, and by a world that lieth in wickedness! What folly and presumption to trust in any but divine strength, against such a confederacy as this! A conviction of his own utter inability, and a correspondent humility and dependance on God, laid the foundation of those triumphs over the enemies of the cross, which this eminent soldier of Christ achieved. Conscious of his own weakness, but strong in faith, he fought and conquered.

Whenever he had time for general reading,

he turned with great delight to works of natural history and biography, subjects with which he was desirous that his children should be well acquainted.

The works of nature were to him a neverfailing source of delightful study, and he had a very pleasing method of spiritualizing different subjects. His favourite retirement was the garden, where in peaceful solitude, and among the most amiable productions of the divine hand, he sought an occasional retreat from the noisy bustle and parade of a military life.*

In modern biography, no work interested him more than the life of Colonel Gardiner, whose character, both as a christian and a soldier, he deemed a fit model for imitation, and with whose conduct he compared his own, point by point, in the many parallel circumstances of their lives,

* It was his constant endeavour to obtain information upon useful subjects: with this view he directed his conversation to those points, on which the persons with whom he conversed were best qualified to speak. With a sailor he would talk of seas, and winds, and harbours: with a traveller, of the countries he had seen, and the manners of the natives: with a mechanic or manufacturer, of the particular art and process in which each was concerned. Thus he acquired a general, if not an accurate, knowledge on a variety of subjects, to which it was not likely his reading would extend, and the time spent in company was at least redeemed from its usual unprofitableness.

remarking with great contrition on his own inferiority.

Neither natural candour nor christian charity allowed him to palliate the guilt of infidel writers; nor could all the charms of a seducing eloquence bribe him into a qualified approbation of their works, which, as soon as he perceived their impious tendency, he threw aside with unfeigned abhorrence.

Next to infidelity, he reprobated that spirit of insurrection against the powers that are, which of late years has particularly shewn itself under the name of republicanism, and which he considered as the legitimate offspring of impiety. The French revolution, with all its horrors, was before his eyes; and a comparative view of the superior blessings we enjoy in our laws and constitution of government, to those of any other nation upon earth, made him extremely jealous of designs, which, under the pretext of reform, might have for their ulterior object, innovations in the state. Systematic opposition to government, he thought indefensible, both in principle and practice; and lamented that all parties had in turn adopted it. He was sincerely attached to his sovereign, from a regard to his personal as well as his public character, and felt every indignity offered to him, with the keenest sensibility. His present calamity he

regarded as a most afflictive dispensation of Providence, and made it the subject of frequent and earnest prayer.

On all points of public duty, whether civil or military, he took the word of God, and not the general practice of men, for the law of his conscience. He revered the express command of our Lord, "Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's," an injunction which convicts those of hypocrisy who pretend to be servants of Christ, while they withhold from Government its lawful dues; or for filthy lucre's sake contaminate themselves with the dishonest gains of the smuggler.

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He thought it the most sacred duty of a father, to provide in the first place for the moral and religious instruction of his offspring; and he lamented, with pious men in general, the little attention paid to these fundamental parts of education in our great classical schools, on the model of which those of inferior celebrity throughout the kingdom are commonly framed. His dread of the evils resulting from this defect of system, as well as from the want of a vigilant superintendance of the moral conduct, which in large seminaries is hardly practicable, determined him to keep his children under his own eye, and to take as great a share in their education as leisure from military duties, and his own qualifications, would admit.

To this determination he adhered under many un propitious circumstances, and without regard to personal and domestic convenience; not counting the cost in a matter of so much moment as the "training up of his children in the way in which they should go." The steady prosecution of this plan obliged him more than once to change his residence, that his elder sons might receive classical instruction with safety to their morals, and without foregoing the benefit of that religious discipline which was established in his family and when upon trial he found that his circumstances would not admit of uniting both these advantages, he sacrificed the less to the greater, and gave the preference where it was clearly due.

As religion always maintained the first place in his own mind, it not only formed a distinct and separate head of instruction in his plan of education, but also incorporated itself with all the other branches of learning. What indeed is there to be found in the whole compass of existence but God and his works? and is it not the province of reason and philosophy, to connect the effect with its cause? If so, it must be a fatal mistake in teaching the former to overlook the latter. Hence arises the horrid abuse of human learning, by which it is made the pander of pride, scepticism, and infidelity. If religion, the only effectual prevention to this abuse, be not sedulously taught in

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