“People here imagine I must be sadly troubled that I have not got a regiment, (for six out of seven vacant are now disposed of):  but they are strangely mistaken, for it has given me no sort of trouble.  My Heavenly Father knows what is best for me; and blessed and ever adored be his name, he has given me an entire resignation to his will.  Besides, I do not know that I met with any disappointment, since I was a Christian, but it pleased God to discover to me that it was plainly for my advantage, by bestowing something better upon me afterwards, many instances of which I am able to produce; and therefore I should be the greatest of monsters, if I did not trust in him.”

I should be guilty of a great omission, if I were not to add how remarkably the event corresponded with his faith on this occasion; for whereas he had no intimation or expectation of any thing more than a regiment of foot, his Majesty was pleased, out of his great goodness, to give him a regiment of dragoons which was then quartered in his own neighborhood.  It is properly remarked by the reverend and worthy person through whose hand this letter was transmitted to me, that when the colonel thus expressed himself, he could have no prospect of what he afterwards so soon obtained, as General Bland’s regiment, to which he was advanced, was only vacant on the 19th of April—­that is, two days before the date of this letter, when it was impossible he should have any notice of that vacancy.  It also deserves observation, that some few days after the colonel was thus unexpectedly promoted to the command of these dragoons, Lord Cornwallis’s regiment of foot, then in Flanders, became vacant.  Now, had this happened before his promotion to General Bland’s, Colonel Gardiner, in all probability, would only have had that regiment of foot, and so would have continued in Flanders.  When the affair was settled, he informs Lady Frances of it in a letter dated from a village near Frankfort, 3d May, in which he refers to his former of the 21st of April, observing how remarkably it was verified “in God’s having given him” (for so he expressed it, agreeably to the views which he continually maintained of the universal agency of Divine Providence) “what he had no expectation of, and what was so much better than that which he had missed—­a regiment of dragoons quartered at his own door.”

CHAPTER XII.

RETURN TO ENGLAND.

It appeared to him that by this remarkable event Providence called him home.  Accordingly, though he had other preferments offered him in the army, he chose to return, and I believe the more willingly, as he did not expect there would have been an action.  Just at this time it pleased God to give him an awful instance of the uncertainty of human prospects and enjoyments, by that violent fever which seized him at Ghent on his way to England, and perhaps the more severely for the efforts he made to push on his journey, though