[D] Of my brother here introduced for the last time, I must yet say a few words. He was literally
The child of misery baptized in tears;
and the short passages of his life did not belie the melancholy presage of his infancy. When he was seven years old, the parish bound him out to a husbandman of the name of Leman, with whom he endured incredible hardships, which I had it not in my power to alleviate. At nine years of age he broke his thigh; and I took that opportunity to teach him to read and write. When my own situation was improved, I persuaded him to try the sea; he did so, and was taken on board the Egmont, on condition that his master should receive his wages. The time was now fast approaching when I could serve him, but he was doomed to know no favourable change of fortune: he fell sick, and died at Cork.
[E] My indenture, which now lies before me, is dated the first of January, 1772.
BIOGRAPHY—FOR THE MIRROR.
SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF THE LATE MR. HODGKINSON.
(Continued from page 297.)
The regulations of society, and the accidents of life too often thwart the intentions of nature. Multitudes of human beings are in every age poured forth from her inexhaustible stores, with inherent powers to rise to distinction in the highest provinces of art and science, who yet are condemned by the obstructions which worldly circumstance throws in their way, to languish in obscurity—to live dejected and to die unknown. Some whose natural endowments would, under less unpropitious circumstances, qualify them to reach the summit of fame, are fettered by want of patronage and pecuniary distress, while others are cramped in their efforts by a complexional sensibility which they cannot overcome, and checked in enterprise by diffidence and timidity, the natural offspring of a refined and delicate structure.