SOME REMARKABLE PASSAGES IN THE LIFE OF THE HONOURABLE COLONEL JAMES GARDINER, Who was Slain at THE BATTLE OF PRESTONPANS, WITH AN APPENDIX, RELATING TO THE ANCIENT FAMILY OF THE MUNROES OF FOWLIS. BY P. DODDRIDGE, D. D. -Juftior alter Nec Pietate fuit, nec Bello major et Armis. VIRG. D. LONDON: PRINTED FOR THE BOOKSELLERS. 1794. W DEAR SIR, HILE 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 amidft the inftruments of death, and the far more dangerous allurements of vice, I feel a peculiar pleafure 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 person 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 molt beloved fon. Here, Sir, you fee a gentleman, who, with all the advantages of a liberal and religious education, added to every natural accomplishment that could render him most agreeable, entered, before he had attained the ftature of a man, on thofe arduous and generous fervices to which you are devoted, and behaved in them with a gallantry and courage, which will always give a fplendour to his name among the British foldiery, and render him an example to all officers of his rank. But, alas! amidst all the intrepidity of the martial Hero, you fee him vanquished by the blandifhments of pleasure, and, in chace of it, plunging himfelf into follies and vices, for which no want of education or genius could have been a fufficient excufe. You behold him urging the ignoble and fatal purfuit, unmoved by the terrors which death was continually darting around him, and the moft fignal deliverances by which providence again and again refcued him from thofe terrors, till at length he was reclaimed by an ever-memorable interpofition of divine grace. Then you have the pleasure of feeing him become, in good earneft, a convert to Christianity, and, by fpeedy advances, growing up into one of its brightest ornaments; his mind continually filled with the great ideas which the gofpel of our Redeemer fuggefts, and bringing the bleffed influence of its fublime principles into every relation of military and civil, of public and domeftic life. You trace him perfevering in a steady and uniform course of goodness, through a long feries of honourable and profperous years, the delight of all that were fo happy as to know him, and, in his sphere, the most faithful guardian of his country; till at laft, worn out with honourable labours, and broken with infirmities which they had haftened upon him before the time, |