m France on e.g. August 4th, 1719 would be
dated August 4, N.S.)]

LIFE OF COL. JAMES GARDINER.

CHAPTER I.

PARENTAGE AND EARLY DAYS.

When I promised the public some larger account of the life and character
of this illustrious person, than I could conveniently insert in my sermon
on the sad occasion of his death, I was secure, that if Providence
continued my capacity of writing, I should not wholly disappoint the
expectation; for I was furnished with a variety of particulars which
appeared to me worthy of general notice, in consequence of that intimate
friendship with which he had honoured me during the last six years of his
life--a friendship which led him to open his heart to me, in repeated
conversations, with an unbounded confidence, (as he then assured me,
beyond what he had used with any other man living,) so far as religious
experiences were concerned; and I had also received several very valuable
letters from him during the time of our absence from each other, which
contained most genuine and edifying traces of his Christian character.
But I hoped further to learn many valuable particulars from the papers of
his own closet, and from his letters to other friends, as well as
from what they more circumstantially knew concerning him. I therefore
determined to delay the execution of my promise till I could enjoy these
advantages for performing it in the most satisfactory manner; nor have I,
on the whole, reason to regret that determination.

I shall not trouble the reader with all the causes which concurred to
retard these expected assistances for almost a whole year. The chief of
them was the tedious languishing illness of his afflicted lady, through
whose hands it was proper the papers should pass; together with the
confusion into which the rebels had thrown them when they ransacked
his seat at Bankton, where most of them were deposited. But having now
received such of them as have escaped their rapacious hands, and could
conveniently be collected and transmitted, I set myself with the greatest
pleasure to perform what I esteem not merely a tribute of gratitude to
the memory of my invaluable friend, (though never was the memory of any
mortal man more precious and sacred to me,) but of duty to God, and to my
fellow-creatures; for I have a most cheerful hope that the narrative I am
now to write will, under the divine blessing, be a means of spreading,
what of all things in the world, every benevole