My father, though outwardly calm, was, I felt assured, only able to repress his emotion by a great effort. When the ship began to weigh anchor, and it was necessary for all visitors to go ashore, he strained me to his breast, and said:—
"Farewell, my son, I know I can trust you to act up to those high principles I have always set before you. Religion and loyalty are the best foundation for a successful career in any condition, and I know my boy has both."
With these words, and with many a tender pressure of my hand, he quitted me, having first given me a volume on which he had been engaged for some time back, and the first copy of which he had that morning received from his publisher. It was entitled "Constitutional Sermons," and contained a collection of his own discourses, in which he endeavoured to show, with complete success I believe, the perfect agreement of the British Constitution with the doctrines of Christianity.
I watched the boat that conveyed my loved relations to shore with eyes dimmed with tears, and a heart almost bursting with emotion. However, the passage down the river soon gave me something else to occupy my thoughts, and I gradually became highly interested in the novelties surrounding me.
Our ship was a perfectly new vessel, built according to the design of a very ingenious gentleman, who, though not a professional shipbuilder, had, by his very original writings and researches, inspired a belief in many quarters that the ordinary modes of constructing ships were all wrong, that the system of shipbuilding he advocated was the only one based on sound principles, and that ships constructed on his
