то DAVID GARDINER, Esq. CORNET IN SIR JOHN COPE'S REGIMENT OF DRAGOONA DEAR SIR, WHILE my heart is following you with a truly paternal folicitude, through all the dangers of military life, in which you are thus early engaged, anxious for your fafety amidst the inftruments of death, and the far more dangerous allurements of vice, I feel a peculiar pleasure in being able at length, though after fuch long delays, to put into your hands the memoirs with which I now prefent you. They contain many particulars, which would have been worthy of your attentive notice, had they related to a perfon of the most diftant nation or age: But they will, I doubt not, command your peculiar regard, as they are facred to the memory of that excellent man, from whom you had the honour to derive your birth, and by whofe generous and affectionate care you have been laid under all the obligations which the best of fathers could confer on a most beloved fon. |