Page:Most remarkable passages in the life of the honourable Colonel James Gardiner.pdf/5

 parents and other pious friends, to do their duty, and to hope for those good consequences of it, which may not immediately appear.

Could his mother, or a very religious aunt (of whose good instructions and exhortations I have often heard him speak with pleasure) have prevailed, he would not have thought of a military life; from which it is no wonder these ladies endeavoured to dissuade him, considering the mournful experience they had of the dangers attending it, and the dear relatives they had lost already by it. But it suited his taste; and the ardeur of his spirit, animated by the persuasions of a friend, who greatly urged it, was not to be restrained. Nor will the reader wonder, that, thus excited and supported, it easily overbore their tender remonstrances, when he knows that this lively youth fought three duels before he attained to the stature of a man; in one of which, when he was about eight years old, he received from a boy much older than himself, a wound in the right cheek, the fear of which was always very apparent. The false sense of honour which instigated him to it, might seem indeed something excusable, in these unripened years, and considering the the profession of his father, brother, and uncle ; but I have often heard him mention this: rashness with that regret which the reflection would naturally give to so wife and good a man in the maturity of life. And I have been informed, that after his remarkable conversion, he declined accepting a challenge, with this calm and truly great reply, which, in a man of his experienced bravery, was exceeding graceful: "I fear sinning, though, you know, I do is not fear fighting."

He served first as a Cadet, which must have been very early, and then, at 14 years old, the bore an Ensign's commission in a Scotch Regiment in the Dutch Service; in which he continued till the you