D PREPARATION.

Henry Martyn was born in England on the south-western coast of Truro,
February 18, 1781. His father, Mr. John Martyn, worked in the mines.
He was not educated but was very fond of learning. The miners were in
the habit of working and resting alternately every four hours. Mr.
John Martyn spent many of his rest intervals in study, and so by
diligence and education raised himself to a higher position, and
became a clerk in the office of a merchant in Truro. When Henry was
seven years old, he went to school to Dr. Cardew. From his earliest
years all who knew him considered him a very interesting and promising
child. Dr. Cardew says his proficiency in the classics exceeded that
of his schoolfellows; he was of a lively, cheerful temper and seemed
to learn without application, almost by intuition. But he was not
robust, and loving books better than sport, and having a peculiar
tenderness and inoffensiveness of spirit, he was often abused by rude
and coarse boys in the school. A friendship which he formed at this
time with a boy older than himself was the source of great comfort and
advantage to him, and was kept up throughout his whole life. This
friend often protected him from the bullies of the play-ground. At
this school, under excellent tuition, Henry remained until fourteen
years old, when he was induced to offer himself as a candidate for a
vacant scholarship at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Young as he was,
he went there alone, and acquitted himself so well, though strongly
and ably opposed by competitors, that in the opinion of some of the
examiners he ought to have been elected. How often is the hand of God
seen in frustrating our fondest designs! Speaking of this
disappointment he afterwards wrote: "Had I remained and become a
member of the university at that time, as I should have done in case
of success, the profligate acquaintances I had there would have
introduced me to scenes of debauchery, in which I must in all
probability, from my extreme youth, have sunk forever."

He continued after this with Dr Cardew till 1797, and then joined his
school friend at Cambridge at St. John's College. Here he obtained a
place in the first class at the public examination in December, a
circumstance which, joined to the extreme desire he had to gratify his
father, encouraged and excited him to study with increased alacrity,
and as the fruit of this application, at the next public examination
in the summer h