PREFACE
It is with diffidence and hesitation that I allow my Early Reminiscences to appear in public. Being in my eighty-ninth year, and having spent much of my life in youth abroad, I venture to think that some account of the social changes that have taken place there, as well as in England, may eventually prove of interest. As M. Suard said: "L'esprit est comme une plante, dont on ne saurait arrêter la végétation sans la faire périr." Consequently, though throughout winter months, from November to March, confined to my room, the mind continues active as the bodily strength fails.
The second reason why I venture to publish these Reminiscences of early days is that it is a record of the formation of my religious and other opinions till my Ordination, when they became fixed, and from which I have never swerved. Such a story of a soul may be of interest to some.
If I have been garrulous, it is the fault of old age. Maupertuis is reported to have said: "L'esprit humain est un fruit qui est vert jusqu'à la vieillesse; le moment de la mort est sa maturité."
I trust it may be so, and that senility of mind may not concur with senility of body.
There is a lesson I think, in all humility, I may say that my life may teach, at all events to some. And that is, to start out in Life with a purpose. I had in fact three.
When I was a boy of seventeen I formed my purposes, and from their accomplishment I have never deviated.
My first was the moral and spiritual improvement of Lew Parish. In my early days there was much manganese mining in it; there were three "floors" where the ore was trodden in water by young women, and this often led to consumption and death. The parish then numbered over four hundred individuals, crushed into the cottages. That one house now occupied by my
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