CHAP. V.]

ST. JOHN OB' JERUSALEM.

181

pardons. Towards fourteen years hence your wants

shall he extremely pressing, and in eight more-

Yet shall I not stop here, hut continue my not inglo-rious theme, and with the same exact veracity as I usedin recounting your former three, recount also yourfourth great disaster, doleful as it needs must he ; andif I obtain little attention, impute it not so mnch toany wilful backwardness in me, but rather to nature,which has not perhaps gifted me—I do not say witheloquence, for of that indeed I have none whatever,as you well know—but of the common faculty ofrelating plain facts clearly. Still, notwithstandingmy misgivings, should the world hear me, it shallhear the very truth, and may then fairly judge.