capable of great improvement; and it was many ways suited to my
inclination, which delighted in cultivating, managing, planting,
and improving of land; and particularly, being an inland country, I
was removed from conversing among sailors and things relating to
the remote parts of the world. I went down to my farm, settled my
family, bought ploughs, harrows, a cart, waggon-horses, cows, and
sheep, and, setting seriously to work, became in one half-year a
mere country gentleman. My thoughts were entirely taken up in
managing my servants, cultivating the ground, enclosing, planting,
&c.; and I lived, as I thought, the most agreeable life that nature
was capable of directing, or that a man always bred to misfortunes
was capable of retreating to.

I farmed upon my own land; I had no rent to pay, was limited by no
articles; I could pull up or cut down as I pleased; what I planted
was for myself, and what I improved was for my family; and having
thus left off the thoughts of wandering, I had not the least
discomfort in any part of life as to this world. Now I thought,
indeed, that I enjoyed the middle state of life which my father so
earnestly recommended to me, and lived a kind of heavenly life,
something like what is described by the poet, upon the subject of a
country life:-


"Free from vices, free from care,
Age has no pain, and youth no snare."


But in the middle of all this felicity, one blow from unseen
Providence unhinged me at once; and not only made a breach upon me