PREFACE. 



which thrust a man out of the world before 

 his time ; the further seclusions and mise- 

 ries attendant upon which, and that dere- 

 liction which a man, who under the teasing 

 fluctuations of personal uneasiness, can 

 no longer partake nor contribute his share 

 to the cheerfulness of others must expect, 

 however heavily it may weigh upon his 

 feelings, to experience, were occasionally 

 cheated away by the arrangement and 

 transmission, from one time to another, of 

 the precepts here communicated. 



It is to this friend, indeed, that their 

 present appearance, in a shape consider- 

 ably more extended than that in which 

 they were originally transmitted to him, 

 must in a great measure be attributed. 

 He had been struck by the novelty of 

 perceiving a subject, from general practice 

 so little reconcileable to order, treated 

 with so much appearance of system and 

 of science. He recognised in it the prin- 

 ciples of that refinement of discipline, 

 which he had recently so much admired 

 in some troops which the author had led 



