The following account of him* is from an endeared sister, who yet survives him. I am not aware that much will be found in the composition requiring apology. But were it otherwise, the benevolent reader would readily find it when informed of her singularly afflicted condition. She has been confined to her chamber, without the exception of a day, for these forty years: nearly the whole of that period she has been speechless, and the hand with which she writes is the only limb she can use.

'You wished me to give you some account of my brother William's childhood and youth. I shall gladly comply with your request, though I do not know that I can recollect any thing that will be interesting to you or the public; and perhaps my brother might be hurt to see any account respecting himself made public while he lives. However, I will try to comply with your request, and leave it to your prudence to make what use of it you please.

'My brother was born August 17, 1761, at Paulerspury, a village in Northamptonshire. His parents, Edmund and Elizabeth Carey, had five children, William, Ann, Mary, Thomas, and Elizabeth. Elizabeth died in infancy. Our grandfather, Mr. Peter Carey, kept a free-school in the same place. I believe the free-school was built for him, with some money that was found and appropriated to that use: the house was afterwards built for him. He had like

* Addressed to Mr. Dyer.

wise five children, William, Peter, Edmund, Thomas, and Ann: the two last died in childhood. William, the eldest, was a young man of very promising abilities, settled in a school at Towcester, a small markettown about three miles from Pury. His prospects appeared flattering; but when about twenty-one or twenty-two, he was cut off by death, after a few days' illness. Thus were the fond hopes of his indulgent parents blasted. This stroke had such an effect on his father, that he never got over it; and, in about a fortnight after, he was removed by death also. By these strokes his wife, a woman of remarkable tenderness, and of a very delicate constitution, was deprived of her son and her husband, and soon after her home, as she had no child then capable of supplying the father's place. Her second son, Peter, at that time quite a youth, was gone out of the land with a neighbouring gentleman; and, at that time, I believe his mother was uncertain whether he was in the land of the living. My father was only seven years old at the time of his father's death. He was afterwards put apprentice by his mother in the same village; and I have often heard him speak of the pleasure he took in spending his leisure hours in attention to his mother. She was a person of a very delicate habit of body; but her calm and even disposition, and, I hope, her patient resignation to the divine will, enabled her to bear up under all her troubles with christian fortitude. After her son's marriage she lived with him till some time after the birth of his two first children, whom she called William and Ann, after

her own. Thus, like Naomi, she nursed them in her own bosom, and seemed to think the Lord had dealt bountifully with her in her captivity. I have often heard my mother mention her with great tenderness. Had she been spared a little longer, she might have been restored to her former home again. The person that occupied the school after the death of her husband, was suddenly removed by death. My father was then judged a proper person to succeed him; which he did, when his son William was in his sixth year. At that early period he discovered a great aptness for learning. I have often heard my mother speak of one circumstance she had remarked with pleasure in him, even before he was six years old. She has heard him in the night, when the family were asleep, casting accompts; so intent was he from childhood in the pursuit of knowledge. Whatever he began he finished: difficulties never seemed to discourage his mind; and, as he grew up, his thirst for knowledge still increased. The room that was wholly appropriated to his use was full of insects, stuck in every corner, that he might observe their progress. Drawing and painting he was very fond of, and made considerable progress in those arts, all acquired by himself. Birds, and all manner of insects, he had numbers of. When he was from home the birds were in general committed to my care. Being so much younger, I was indulged by him in all his enjoyments. Though I often used to kill his birds by kindness, yet, when he saw my grief for it, he always indulged me with the pleasure of serving

them again; and often took me over the dirtiest roads to get at a plant or an insect. He never walked out, I think, when quite a boy, without observation on the hedges as he passed; and when he took up a plant of any kind, he always observed it with care. Though I was but a child, I well remember his pursuits. He always seemed earnest in his recreations, as well as in school. Like the industrious bee, he was always gathering something useful. It seemed as if nature was fitting him for something great; from a child forming him for future usefulness; while, at the same time, he was generally one of the most active in all the amusements and recreations that boys in general pursue. He was always beloved by the boys about his own age. Though his manners were rather awkward, and there was nothing in his person prepossessing to a superficial observer, yet the more intelligent could discover marks indicating greatness of mind and genius, even from childhood. An intelligent neighbour of ours used often to say, he was sure, if he lived to be ever so old, he would always be a learner, and in pursuit of something further. This remark has hitherto been verified. At the time brother lived at Leicester, a gentleman in our neighbourhood was making particular inquiry of me about him. He seemed to think it a lamentable thing that he was a dissenter. Never a youth promised fairer, he said, to make a great man, had he not turned a cushion-thumper. His natural fondness for a garden was cherished, I think, by his uncle, Mr. Peter Carey, who was then settled in the same village, and at

times, when able, followed that occupation, and often had his nephew with him, not having any child of his own. While brother continued at home he seldom left any part of his father's garden uncultivated, he was so fond of flowers.

*

'While brother Carey was a boy, he was much afflicted with a scorbutic disorder in his face and hands. When he had been exposed to the sun in the day, he was in distressing agony through the night. On that account he never could work in the field, or do any thing that exposed him long to the heat of the day. Nothing seemed to relieve this complaint for a long while. This induced our parents to put him to some trade. He accordingly was put apprentice to a cordwainer at Piddington, a respectable person, when he was in his sixteenth year. We were brought up to the Establishment; and brother Carey was rather prejudiced against dissenters, though never permitted to discover his dislike to them; for though my father's situation in the school was connected with the clerk's place, as many others were at that time, yet father was always a lover of those he thought good people, and a great reader. He was particular, in his example as well as precepts, to inculcate the strictest habits of integrity and uprightness, in words and actions, before his children; and the person my brother was placed with was of the same disposition. He had an older apprentice, who was brought up a dissenter, and I believe was, about that time, under serious impressions. It was in disputes with this young man that brother first dis