RETURN TO LONDON. 869

and that there was something which certainly was the reason and
end of life superior to all these things, and which was either to be
possessed or at least hoped for on this side the grave.

But my sage counsellor was gone. I was like a ship without a
pilot, that could only run afore the wind. My thoughts ran all
away again into the old affair; my head was quite turned with
the whimsies of foreign adventures ; and all the pleasant innocent
amusements of my farm and my garden, my cattle and my family,
which before entirely possessed me, were nothing to me, had no
relish, and were like music to one that has no ear, or food to one
that has no taste. In a word, I resolved to leave off house-keep-
ing, let my farm, and return to London; and in a few months
after, I did so.

When I came to London I was still as uneasy as I was before.
T had no relish to the place, no employment in it, nothing to do
but to saunter about like an idle person, of whom it may be said
he is perfectly useless in God’s creation, and it is not one farthing
matter to the rest of his kind whether he be dead or alive. This
also was the life which of all circumstances of life was the most
my aversion, who had been all my days used to an active life; and
I would often say to myself, “ A state of idleness is the very dregs
of life:” and indeed T thought I was much more suitably employed
when I was twenty-six days a making me a deal board.

It was now the beginning of the year 1693, when my nephew,
whom, as I have observed before, I had brought up to the sea, and
had made him commander of a ship, was come home from a short
voyage to Bilboa, being the first he had made; and he came to
me, and told me that some merchants of his acquaintance had been
proposing to him to go a voyage for them to the East Indies and
to China as private traders. ‘‘ And now, uncle,” says he, “if you
will go to sea with me, I’ll engage to land you upon your old
habitation in the island, for we are to touch at the Brazils.”

Nothing can be a greater demonstration of a future state, and of
the existence of an invisible world, than the concurrence of second
causes with the ideas of things which we form in our minds per-
fectly reserved, and not communicated to any in the world. My
nephew knew nothing how far my distemper of wandering was