wide world at a very early age, not more than eleven or twelve years,
without money to support, without friends to advise, and without
book-learning to assist me; passing a few years dependent solely on my
own labour for my subsistence; then becoming a common soldier and
leading a military life, chiefly in foreign parts, for eight years;
quitting that life after really, for me, high promotion, and with, for
me, a large sum of money; marrying at an early age, going at once to
France to acquire the French language, thence to America; passing eight
years there, becoming bookseller and author, and taking a prominent part
in all the important discussions of the interesting period from 1793 to
1799, during which there was, in that country, a continued struggle
carried on between the English and the French parties; conducting
myself, in the ever-active part which I took in that struggle, in such a
way as to call forth marks of unequivocal approbation from the
government at home; returning to England in 1800, resuming my labours
here, suffering, during these twenty-nine years, two years of
imprisonment, heavy fines, three years self-banishment to the other side
of the Atlantic, and a total breaking of fortune, so as to be left
without a bed to lie on, and, during these twenty-nine years of troubles
and of punishments, writing and publishing, every week of my life,
whether in exile or not, eleven weeks only excepted, a periodical paper,
containing more or less of matter worthy of public attention; writing
and publishing, during _the same twenty-nine years_, a grammar of the
French and another of the English language, a work on the Economy of the
Cottage, a work on Forest Trees and Woodlands, a work on Gardening, an
account of America, a book of Sermons, a work on the Corn-plant, a
History of the Protestant Reformation; all books of great and continued
sale, and the _last_ unquestionably the book of greatest circulation in
the whole world, the Bible only excepted; having, during _these same
twenty-nine years_ of troubles and embarrassments without number,