LETTERS

ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS.

BY

THE REV. JAMES CAUGHEY,

OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, UNITED STATES OF

AMERICA.

VOL. V.

LONDON:

PUBLISHED BY SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO.,

STATIONERS' HALL COURT.

ROBERT PILTER, HUDDERSFIELD.

1847.

210. i. 496.

PREFACE.

TO MESSRS. JOSEPH WEBB AND THOMAS
MALLINSON, OF HUDDERSFIELD.

My dear Brethren,

New York, Nov. 8th, 1847.

As

It has been suggested by some of my friends, that a short account of my late voyage, and of my reception in America, would be the most acceptable Preface I could write for my Fifth Volume of Letters. the English public have already been made acquainted with the proceedings at my "farewell meetings" in Sheffield, Birmingham, and Liverpool, a repetition of them here will hardly be considered necessary. It is, however, my intention, should life be spared, to publish "in due course," my letters descriptive of these neverto-be-forgotten services. Let it suffice for the present to say, that on the 20th day of July, 1847, after taking a most tender farewell of a large number of precious

friends, who had accompanied me on board the steamer Hibernia, that noble vessel weighed anchor, and "stood down" the Mersey. With a deeply-affected heart I watched the motions of the small steamer which bore my friends to the shore ;-friends dear to my soul ;who, to the last hour of my footsteps on British soil,— to the last moment of our parting, lavished upon me the tokens of their boundless affection :

"There are moments in life that are never forgot,
Which brighten, and brighten, as time steals away;—
Oh! these hallowed remembrances cannot decay;
But they come on the soul with a magical thrill;
And in days that are darkest they kindly will stay,
And the heart in its last throb will beat with them still.”

But, alas! that was a sad, sad day; and had it not been for the hope of meeting these beloved ones again, ―upon earth,—I should have been heart-broken. My straining eyes followed the little steamer, till it was lost to recognition among other boats; and when I no longer knew the one around which my affections should entwine, wandering vision found repose upon Liverpool, where I knew that not a few of my spiritual children resided, and in whose streets many of my friends had arrived, with whom I had parted an hour or two before. Liverpool at length disappeared, and lastly, the happy shores of England itself;-" that little world,-that