world. Few could enter life with more flattering and
apparently better-grounded prospects of attaining to all that would
gratify a mind with strong intellectual powers, and naturally ambitious
of preferment. His manly form, blooming with health, betokened physical
strength and endurance. His disposition, though lively and active, was
marked by docility and sweetness. He possessed ready wit, and his good
mental abilities had been well developed and trained by careful culture,
and strengthened by extensive and profound literary attainments. Men
high in power and place smiled upon him. His father enjoyed close
intimacy with the Duke of York, heir presumptive to the crown, and
eagerly sought to secure for his son the glory and riches of the world,
which courted his acceptance.

The Admiral having been appointed by the Duke of York to accompany him
in command of the fleet, took William as one of his staff; but after a
short absence the latter was sent home with a dispatch to the King. The
plague was now spreading in London, and soon the whole aspect of the
city was sadly changed. The awful scenes of death that were daily
occurring and struck the stoutest hearts with dismay, brought to the
sensitive mind of the gay young man conviction of the uncertainty of
life, and warning of the necessity to prepare for its sudden
termination. The Holy Spirit again broke up his false rest, showed him
the emptiness of all worldly grandeur, and wooed him to follow Christ
Jesus in the regeneration.

After a cruise of about two months, his father returned, flushed with
success in the sanguinary contest in which he had been engaged. He found
William again serious, and indisposed to continue the course upon which,
but a short time before, he had exultantly entered. The increased honors
and emoluments heaped on the victorious sailor by the royal brothers,
made him still more fearful lest the foolish whimsies, as he thought
them, of his son, would yet disappoint his hopes of the hereditary
honors that might be settled upon him. Large accession to his Irish
estate, derived from royal bounty as a reward for the service rendered,
made it necessary that some one should look after his interest there;
and having experienced the good effect, as he considered it, of placing
his son within the dazzling circle of gay and fashionable life, he
hurried him across the Channel, with letters of introduction to the Duke
of Ormond, then Lord Deputy of Ireland.