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This desirable end the Editor conceives will be

accomplished in the present work, which, he is persuaded, is calculated to produce a salutary influence on the mind of the reader; and will, he trusts, be a means of advancing the spiritual welfare of

many.

J. G.

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MEMOIR.

CHAPTER I.

BIRTH-EDUCATION-INFIDEL PRINCIPLES-MEETS WITH

AN ACCIDENT.

WILLIAM THARP BUCHANAN, the subject of the following Memoir, was the eldest son of BUCHANAN, Esq. late of Ilfracombe. He was a young man of considerable natural talents, and acquirements in literature: he possessed a mind that sought to grasp a subject in all its bearings, and, wherever he could, to trace the essential connexion between cause and effect. To this was added a principle of resistance, somewhat too strong, when he met with opposition, and a quickness of feeling, bordering on asperity, which rendered his character at times unamiable, till it

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was softened and subdued by Divine grace. Hence many disappointments, as he grew up, and trials repugnant to his temper, produced in him a tendency to misanthropy, not often met with in young persons: this, combined with an ardent love of natural scenery, increased the fondness for rural retirement, and even solitude, in which he delighted, and frequently indulged.

He was educated for a military life; but taking a disgust at some occurrences not necessary to mention, he suddenly abandoned all idea of entering the army, and almost as suddenly turned his thoughts towards the church, with the intention of ministering at its altars. Nor need this excite surprise; for his love of the Creator's works excited in him that natural love and admiration of the Creator, which is not utterly extinguished by the fall, in the human breast. He felt with exquisite sensibility the force of the following lines:

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"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods;
There is a rapture by the lonely shore;
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:

I love not man the less, but nature more,
For these our interviews."

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