LETTEES. 249 



I struments excited, when my thoughts were suddenly 

 called away to more melancholy subjects. A girl, gen- 

 teelly dressed, and with a countenance which, for its 

 loveliness, a painter might have copied for Hebe, with 

 a loud laugh seized me by the great coat, and asked me 

 to leni^it her : she was one of those unhappy creatures 

 who depend on the brutal and licentious for a bitter 

 livelihood, and was now following in the train of one of 

 the officers. I was greatly affected by her appearance 

 and situation, and more so by that of another female 

 who was with her, and who, with less beauty, had a wild 

 sorrowfulness in her face; uhich showed she knew her 

 situation. This incident, apparently trifling, induced a 

 train of reflections, which occupied me fully during a walk 

 of six or seven miles to our parsonage. At first I wished 

 that I had fortune to erect an asylum for all the miser- 

 able and destitute :■ — and there was a soldier's wife, with 

 a wan and a hagged face, and a little infant in her arms, 

 whom I would also have wished to place in it. I then 

 grew out of humour with the world, because it was so 

 unfeeling and so miserable, and because there was no 

 cure for its miseries ; and I wished for a lodging in the 

 wilderness, where I might hear no more of wrongs, afilic- 

 tion, or vice : but, after all my speculations, I found 

 there was a reason for these things in the Gospel of 

 Jesus Christ, and that to those "who sought it there was 

 also a cure. So I banished my vain meditations, and 

 knowing that God's providence is better able to direct 

 the affairs of men than our wisdom — I leave them in His 



hands. 



* * * * 



TO HIS MOTHER. 



Winteringliam, 5th Feb. 1805. 

 Dear Mother, 



* * * * 



The spectacles for my father are, I hope, such as will 

 enable him to read with ease, al'Jiough they are not set 



