This I despatched to A., who was become very uneasy and impatient. So now the business seems concluded and the die cast, but may the Lord prevent it taking place if it is to be productive of evil to the eternal interests of either! I pray for this, may He hear my prayers. I have little notion of comfort in anything that is undertaken without consulting God, opening the business to Him, and begging His direction how to proceed. I have had a letter from Orbell’s[[226]] friend, who agrees to my terms of letting Ar.’s farm, so, thank God, that is settled.
17th.—Many difficulties have occurred relative to a post-chaise for them. Brown has examined my old one and sent an estimate of the repairs, 56l. Smirenove approved of it, but his second advice is that it would not do. He proposed one of his, and letters backwards and forwards. But yesterday I found one at Holmes’s in Long Acre, built for a Mr. Lock to go to Malta, which will do exactly, and in which they may have bedding and sleep at full length; a journeyman said the price was 50 guineas. H. not at home, in the evening a letter, and 70 guineas named.
I got up as always at 4 A.M., and have been reading and praying. Fry last Sunday alluded to an apostate from the truth, and Wilberforce asked him who it was, saying that of course he would not answer if the question was improper.
It was Townsend,[[227]] of Wiltshire, the traveller in Spain, who began his career quite in the style of Whitfield’s energy and openness of declaring his principles in the fields or in barns, &c. The Lansdown folks told him they could never make him a bishop with such conduct or such principles; upon which he dropped the whole, giving out to his friends that he only suspended his conduct and meant to resume it at a better season. That never came, and he has continued an apostate from all religion, and from having 200 communicants at his church, has now only two or three besides himself and his clerk.
This miserably constituted Board of Agriculture is ever in a dilemma when a new president is to be elected. Lord S. will keep it no longer, and he is in a difficulty to propose another. He has written to the Duke of Bedford, and I fear in a way that may make the duke suppose that Government approves of it. Lord Carrington I suspected intended to come in again, but he assures me that he would not.
March 3.—I borrowed of Mr. Wilberforce, Owen[[228]] on ‘Indwelling Sin,’ to which are annexed two other essays on Temptation and the Mortification of Sin in Believers. The last work is incomparable, chapter ix. of it perhaps the most useful paper ever written. I have made many extracts from all three. The essay on Mortification I meditate printing a new edition of, being out of print, to which I could add notes that might be useful. The reading these treatises has had an effect on my mind which I hope, with the blessing of the grace of God, will produce a more serious attention to the state of my heart with God than reading any book has done since Wilberforce’s.
April 20.—At Bradfield. Yesterday returned from Harwich. Arthur and Jane went on board the ‘Diana’ packet, Capt. Stewart, Thursday, the 18th, at 3 o’clock, and I have taken a long and melancholy farewell of them! Oh! may Almighty God give His blessing to the undertaking, and that we may all meet again in health and happiness. But when the fearful uncertainty of all earthly events is considered, such partings ought to be more melancholy than they are. She felt much, and has a cordial affection for me.
The undertaking, thus employed by a foreign sovereign to make a report of one of his provinces, is the first thing of the kind that has occurred, and will either give Arthur a great reputation, or sink that which he has gained. It is a very difficult work, however, to produce a good book from a very ill-cultivated province, and in the large experience of all our own reports we see that very few are well executed; the object has either been ill understood or poorly done, the surveyors deal in reflections instead of giving the experience of individuals, yet the husbandry of a county is made up of nothing else but private exertions. They do not half travel [over] the districts, and do not take notes of the practice of one hundredth part of those persons that might be applied to. Arthur goes with every possible advantage except languages, I hope he will exert them.
Bradfield is very melancholy without them. Jane was always cheerful, always affectionate and kind to me, ever pleased with my presence, and never parted from me but with regret. The loss of such a friend with much conversation and an excellent understanding nothing human can make amends for. It is a loss that ought to turn all my attention and all my heart to that better world where parting, sorrow, and death will find no place.
24th.—Last night I slept at Bury, at the Oakes’, having walked there in the morning and dined with them. It raised my low spirits a little—but badly—for such company is mere dissipation.