He had two or three opportunities, indeed, of hearing a minister of eminent character and gifts, whom, though struck with his manner, he did not rightly understand. Almost every day, when business would permit, he used to retire into the woods and fields (being his favourite oratories), and began to taste the delight of communion with God, in the exercises of prayer and praise: and yet so much inconsistency prevailed, that he frequently spent the evening in vain and worthless company. His relish, indeed, for worldly diversions was much weakened; and he was rather a spectator than a sharer in these pleasures; but he did not as yet see the necessity of absolutely relinquishing such society. It appears, that compliances of this sort, in his present circumstances, were owing rather to a want of light than to any obstinate attachment. As he was kept from what he knew to be sinful, he had, for the most part, peace of conscience; and his strongest desires were towards the things of God. He did not as yet apprehend the force of that precept, Abstain from all appearance of evil: but he very often ventured upon the very brink of temptation. He did not break with the world at once, as might have been expected; but was gradually led to see the inconvenience and folly of first one thing and then another, and, as such, to give them up.

They finished their voyage, and arrived in Liverpool. When the ship's affairs were settled, Mr. N. went to London, and from thence he soon repaired to Kent. More than seven years had now elapsed since his first visit. No views of the kind seemed more chimerical than his, or could subsist under greater discouragements; yet, while he seemed abandoned to his passions, he was still guided, by a Hand that he knew not, to the accomplishment of his wishes. Every obstacle was now removed: he had renounced his former follies; his interest was established, and friends on all sides consenting. The point was now entirely between the parties immediately concerned; and, after what had passed, was easily concluded: accordingly, their hands were joined, February the 1st, 1750.

"But, alas!" says he," this mercy, which raised me to all I could ask or wish in a temporal view, and which ought to have been an animating motive to obedience and praise,

had a contrary effect. I rested in the gift, and forgot the Giver. My poor narrow heart was satisfied. A cold and careless frame, as to spiritual things, took place, and gained ground daily. Happy for me, the season was advancing; and, in June, I received orders to repair to Liverpool. This roused me from my dream; and I found the pains of absence and separation fully proportioned to my preceding pleasure*. Through all my following voyage, my irregular and excessive affections were as thorns in my eyes, and often made my other blessings tasteless and insipid. But He, who doeth all things well, over-ruled this likewise for good it became an occasion of quickening me in prayer, both for her and myself: it increased my indifference for company and amusement: it habituated me to a kind of voluntary self-denial, which I was afterwards taught to improve to a better purpose." Mr. N. sailed from Liverpool in August 1750, commander of a good ship. He had now the control and care of thirty persons; and he endeavoured to treat them with humanity, and to set them a good example+.

He wrote to Mrs. Newton from St. Alban's, and in his letter inserted a prayer for his own health and that of Mrs. N. From his interleaved copy of his "Letters to a wife," I extract the following remarks on this letter.

"This prayer includes all that I at that time knew how to ask for and had not the Lord given me more than I then knew how to ask or think, I should now be completely miserable. The prospect of this separation was terrible to me as death: to avoid it, I repeatedly purchased a ticket in the lottery; thinking, Who knows but I may obtain a considerable prize, and be thereby saved from the necessity of going to sea?" Happy for me, the lot which I then considered as casual was at thy disposal. The money, which I could not with prudence have spared at the time, was lost all my tickets proved blanks, though I attempted to bribe thee, by promising, if I succeeded, to give a considerable part to the poor. But these blanks were truly prizes. Thy mercy sent me to sea against my own will. To thy blessing, and to my solitary sea-hours, I was indebted for all my temporal comforts and future hopes.

"Thou wert pleased likewise to disappoint me by thy providence of some money which I expected to receive on my marriage; so that, excepting our apparel, when I sailed from Liverpool on my first voyage, the sum total of my worldly inventory was-seventy pounds in debt."

+ I have heard Mr. Newton observe, that, as the commander of a slaveship he had a number of women under his absolute authority: and, knowing the danger of his situation on that account, he resolved to abstain from flesh in his food, and to drink nothing stronger than water, during the voyage; that, by abstemiousness, he might subdue every improper emotion; and that, upon his setting sail, the sight of a certain point of land was the signal for his beginning a rule which he was enabled to keep.

He likewise established public worship, according to the Liturgy of the Church of England, officiating himself twice every Lord's day. He did not proceed further than this, while he continued in that occupation.

Having now much leisure, he prosecuted the study of Latin with good success. He remembered to take a Dictionary this voyage; and added Juvenal to Horace: and, for prose authors, chose Livy, Cæsar, and Sallust. He was not aware of the mistake of beginning with such difficult writers; but, having heard Livy highly commended, he was resolved to understand him: he began with the first page, and made it a rule not to proceed to a second till he understood the first. Often at a stand, but seldom discouraged, here and there he found a few lines quite obstinate, and was forced to give them up, especially as his edition had no notes. Before, however, the close of that voyage, be informed us that he could, with a few exceptions, read Livy almost as readily as an English author. Other prose authors, he says, cost him but little trouble; as, in surmounting the former difficulty, he had mastered all in one. In short, in the space of two or three voyages, he became tolerably acquainted with the best classics. He read Terence, Virgil, several pieces of Cicero; and the modern classics, Buchanan, Erasmus, and Cassimir; and made some essays towards writing elegant Latin.

"But, by this time," he observes, "the Lord was pleased to draw me nearer to himself, and to give me a fuller view of the Pearl of great price-the inestimable Treasure hid in the field of the holy Scripture: and, for the sake of this, I was made willing to part with all my newly 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 laid aside."

This, his first voyage after his marriage, lasted the space of fourteen months, through various scenes of danger and difficulty; but nothing very remarkable occurred: and, after having seen many fall on his right hand and on his left, he was brought home in peace, November 2, 1751.

In the interval between his first and second voyage, he speaks of the use he found in keeping a sort of diary; of the unfavourable tendency of a life of ease, among his friends; and of the satisfaction of his wishes proving unfavourable to the progress of grace: upon the whole, however, he seems to have gained ground, and was led into further views of Christian doctrine and experience by Scougal's "Life of God in the Soul of Man," "Hervey's Meditations," and the "Life of Colonel Gardiner." He seems to have derived no advantages from the preaching he heard, or the Christian acquaintance he had made; and, though he could not live without prayer, he durst not propose it, even to his wife, till she first urged him to the social practice of it.

In a few months, the returning season called him abroad again*; and he sailed from Liverpool in a new ship, July 1752. "I never knew," says he, "sweeter or more frequent hours of divine communion, than in my two last voyages to Guinea, when I was either almost secluded from society on shipboard, or when on shore among the natives. I have wandered through the woods, reflecting on the singular goodness of the Lord to me, in a place where, perhaps, there was not a person who knew me for some thousand miles round. Many a time, upon these occasions, I have restored the beautiful lines of Propertius to the right owner: lines, full of blasphemy and madness, when addressed to a creature; but full of comfort and propriety, in the mouth of a believer."

Sic ego desertis possim benè vivere sylvis
Quo nulla humano sit via trita pede:
Tu mihi curarum requies, in nocte vel atrá
Lumen, et in solis tu mihi turba locis.

PARAPHRASED.

In desert woods with thee, my God,
Where human footsteps never trod,
How happy could I be!

Thou my repose from care, my light
Amidst the darkness of the night,

In solitude my company.

* Mr. N. had had an unexpected call to London; and, on his return, when within a few miles of Liverpool, he mistook a marle-pit for a pond, and, in attempting to water his horse, both the horse and the rider plunged

In the course of this voyage, Mr. N. was wonderfully preserved through many unforeseen dangers. At one time there was a conspiracy among his own people to become pirates, and take possession of the ship: when the plot was nearly ripe, they watched only for opportunity. Two of them were taken ill in one day, and one of them died this suspended the affair, and opened a way to its discovery. The slaves on board frequently plotted insurrections; and were sometimes upon the very brink of one when it was disclosed. When at a place called Mana, near Cape Mount, Mr. N. intended to go on shore the next morning to settle some business; but the surf of the sea ran so high, that he was afraid to attempt landing: he had often ventured at a worse time; but then feeling a backwardness which he could not account for, the high surf furnished a pretext for indulging it: he therefore returned to the ship without doing any business. He afterwards found, that, on the day he intended to land, a scandalous and groundless charge had been laid against him, which greatly threatened his honour and interest, both in Africa and England, and would perhaps have affected his life had he landed: the person most concerned in this affair owed him about a hundred pounds, which he sent in a huff; and otherwise, perhaps, would not have paid it at all: Mr. N. heard no more of this accusation till the next voyage; and then it was publicly acknowledged to have been a malicious calumny, without the least shadow of foundation.

But as these things did not occur every day, Mr. N. prosecuted his Latin, being very regular in the management of his time. He allotted about eight hours to sleep and meals, eight hours to exercise and devotion, and eight hours to his books; and thus, by diversifying his engagements, the whole day was agreeably filled up.

From the coast he went to St. Christopher's, where he met with a great disappointment; for the letters which he expected from Mrs. N. were, by mistake, forwarded to Antigua. Certain of her punctuality in writing, if alive, he concluded, by not hearing from her, that she was surely dead. This fear deprived him of his appetite and rest, and in it overhead. He was afterwards told, that, near that time, three persons had lost their lives by a mistake of the same kind.