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told me, that it was true fhe could not think of parting with me; but as she was affured, that if she was dead it would be the first thing I would do; fo, as it seemed to her that the thing was determined above, fhe would not be the only obftruction: for if I thought fit, and refolved to go here fhe found me very intent upon her words, and that I looked very earnestly at her; so that it a little disordered her, and fhe stopped. I asked her why she did not go on, and fay out what fhe was going to fay? But I perceived her heart was too full, and some tears flood in her eyes: Speak out my dear, faid I, are you willing I should go? No, says she, very affectionately, I am far from willing: but if you are refolved to go, says she, and rather than I will be the only hindrance, I will go with you; for though I think it a prepofterous thing for one of your years, and in your condition, yet if it must be, said she again, weeping, I won't leave you; for if it be of heaven, you must do it; there is no refifting it; and if heaven makes it your duty to go, he will alfo make it mine to go with you, or otherwise dispose of me, that I may not obstruct it.

This affectionate behaviour of my wife brought me a little out of the vapours, and I began to confider what I was doing; I corrected my wandering fancy, and began to argue with myself sedately, what bufiness I had, after threescore years, and after such a life of tedious fufferings and disasters, and closed in so happy and easy a manner, I fay, what business had I to rush into new hazards, and put myself upon adventures, fit only for youth and poverty to run into?

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With thofe thoughts, I confidered my new engage. ment; that I had a wife, one child born, and my wife then great with child of another; that I had all the world could give me, and had no need to feek hazards for gain; that I was declining in years, and ought to think rather of leaving what I had gained, than of feeking to increafe it; that as to what my wife had faid, of its being an impulfe from heaven, and that it should be my duty to go, I had no notion of that; so after many of these cogitations, I ftruggled with the power of my imagination, reafoned myfelf out of it, as I believe people may always do in like cafes, if they will; and, in a word, I conquered it; compofed myself with fuch arguments as occurred to my thoughts, and which my prefent condition furnifhed me plentifully with; and particularly, as the most effectual method, I refolved to divert myself with other things, and to engage in fome business that might effectually tie me up from any more excurfions of this kind; for I found the thing return upon me chiefly when I was idle, had nothing to do, or any thing of moment immediately before me.

To this purpose I bought a little farm in the county of Bedford, and refolved to remove myself thither. I had a little convenient house upon it, and the land about it I found was capable of great improvement, and that it was many ways fuited to my inclination, which delighted in cultivating, managing, planting and improving of land; and particularly, being an inland country, I was removed from converfing among fhips, failors, and things relating to the remote part of the world.

In a word, I went down to my farm, fettled my family, bought me ploughs, harrows, a cart, waggon, horfes, cows, sheep; and setting seriously to work, became in one half year a meer country gentleman; my thoughts were entirely taken up in managing my fervants, cultivating the ground, enclosing, planting, &c. and I lived, as I thought, the moft agreeable life that nature was capable of directing, or that a man always bred to misfortunes was capable of being retreated to.

I farmed upon my own land, I had no rent to pay, was limited by no articles; I could pull up or cut down as I pleased: what I planted was for myfelf, and what I improved, was for my family; and having thus left off the thoughts of wandering, I had not the least discomfort in any part of my life, as to this world. Now I thought indeed, that I enjoyed the middle ftate of life which my father fo earnestly recommended to me, a kind of heavenly life, fomething like what is defcribed by the poet upon the fubject of a country life.

Free from vices, free from care,

Age has no pains, and youth no fnare.

But in the middle of all this felicity, one blow from unforeseen Providence unhinged me at once; and not only made a breach upon me, inevitable and incurable, but drove me, by its confequence, upon a deep relapse into the wandering difpofition; which, as I may fay, being born in my very blood, foon recovered its hold of me, and, like the returns of a violent diftemper, came on with an irrefiftible force upon me; fo that nothing could make any more

B 4

impreffion

impreffion upon me. my wife.

This blow was the lofs of

It is not my business here to write an elegy upon my wife, to give a character of her particular virtues, and make my court to the fex by the flattery of a funeral fermon. She was, in a few words, the stay of all my affairs, the center of all my enterprizes, the engine that by her prudence reduced me to that happy compass I was in, from the most extravagant and ruinous project that fluttered in my head as above; and did more to guide my rambling genius, than a mother's tears, a father's inftructions, a friend's counsel, or all my own reasoning powers could do. I was happy in liftening to her tears, and in being moved by her entreaties, and to the last degree desolate and dislocated in the world by the loss of her.

When she was gone, the world looked aukwardly round me; I was as much a ftranger in it, in my thoughts, as I was in the Brafils when I went first on fhore there; and as much alone, except as to the affistance of fervants, as I was in my ifland. I knew neither what to do, or what not to do. I faw the world bufy round me, one part labouring for bread, and the other part fquandring in vile exceffes or empty pleasures, equally miferable, because the end they proposed still fled from them; for the men of pleasure every day surfeited of their vice, and heaped up work for forrow and repentance; and the men of labour spent their strength in daily ftrugglings for breath to maintain the vital ftrength they laboured with, fo living in a daily circulation of forrow, living but to work, and working but to live, as if daily bread

bread were the only end of a wearisome life, and a wearifome life the only occafion of daily bread.

This put me in mind of the life I lived in my kingdom, the island; where I suffered no more corn to grow, because I did not want it; and bred no more goats, because I had no more use for them: where the money lay in. the drawer till it grew mildewed, and had scarce the favour to be looked upon in 20 years.

All these things, had I improved them as I ought to have done, and as reafon and religion had dictated to me, would have taught me to fearch farther than human enjoyments for a full felicity, and that there was fomething which certainly was the reafon and end of life, fuperior to all these things, and which was either to be poffeffed, or at least hoped for, on this fide the grave.

But my fage counsellor was gone; I was like a fhip without a pilot, that could only run before the wind: my thoughts run all away again into the old affair, my head was quite turned with the whimfies of foreign adventures; and all the pleasing innocent amusements of my farm, and my garden, my cattle, and my family, which before entirely poffeft me, were nothing to me, had no relish, and were like mufic to one that has no ear, or food to one that has no taste: In a word, I refolved to leave off houfe-keeping, lett my farm, and return to London; and in a few months after I did fo.

When I came to London, I was ftill as uneafy as before; I had no relifh to the place, no employment in it, nothing to do but to faunter about like an idle perfon, of whom it may be faid, he is perfectly useless in GoD's creation and it is not one

farthing

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