he had for some days been much indisposed.  It was, I think, one of the first fits of severe illness he had ever met with, and he was ready to look upon it as a sudden call into eternity; but it gave him no painful alarm in that view.  He committed himself to the God of his life, and in a few weeks he was so well recovered as to be capable of pursuing his journey, though not without difficulty.  I cannot but think it might have conduced much to a more perfect recovery than he ever attained, to have allowed himself a longer repose, in order to recruit his exhausted strength and spirits.  But there was an activity in his temper not easy to be restrained, and it was now stimulated, not only with a desire to see his friends, but of being with his regiment, that he might omit nothing in his power to regulate their morals and their discipline, and to form them for public service.  Accordingly, about the middle of June, 1743, he passed through London, where he had the honour of waiting on their royal highnesses, the Prince and Princess of Wales, and of receiving from both the most obliging token of favour and esteem.  He arrived at Northampton on Monday the 21st of June, and spent part of three days there.  But the great pleasure which his return and preferment gave us, was much abated by observing his countenance so sadly altered, and the many marks of languor and remaining disorder which evidently appeared, so that he really looked ten years older than he had done ten months before.  I had, however, a satisfaction sufficient to counterbalance much of the concern which this alteration gave me, in a renewed opportunity of observing, indeed more sensibly than ever, in how remarkable a degree he was dead to the enjoyments and views of this mortal life.  When I congratulated him on the favourable appearances of Providence for him in the late event, he briefly told me the remarkable circumstances that attended it, with the most genuine expressions of gratitude to God for them; but added, “that as his account was increased with his income, power, influence, and his cares were proportionably increased too, it was, as to his own personal concern, much the same to him whether he had remained in his former station, or been elevated to this; but that if God should by this means honour him as an instrument of doing more good than he could otherwise have done, he should rejoice in it.”

I perceived that the near views he had taken of eternity, in the illness from which he was then so imperfectly recovered, had not in the least alarmed him; but that he would have been entirely willing, had such been the determination of God, to have been cut short in a foreign land, without any earthly friend near him, and in the midst of a journey undertaken with hopes and prospects so pleasing to nature, which appeared to me no inconsiderable evidence of the strength of his faith.  But we shall wonder the less at this extraordinary resignation, if we consider the joyful and assured prospect which he had of a happiness infinitely superior beyond the grave; of which that worthy minister of the church of Scotland, who had an opportunity of conversing with him quickly after his return, and having the memorable story of his conversion from his own mouth, (as I have hinted above,) writes thus in his letter to me, dated Jan. 14, 1746-7: