Mr. Marsden's ministerial pursuits and journeys--Love of the Country and of Patriarchal story--His Old Age--Its mental features--Anecdotes--Love of Children--Bishop Broughton--His reverence for Mr. Marsden's character--Mr. Marsden's views of Death, etc.--His Habits of Prayer--His Illness and Death. Mr. Marsden had now passed the allotted span of human life, though his days were not yet "labour and sorrow." Entering upon his seventy-second year with stooping gait and failing eyesight and a decaying memory, he had otherwise few of the mental infirmities of age. He was still a perfect stranger to fear, as well as to that nervous restlessness and susceptibility which wears the appearance of it, though often found, as may be daily observed, in connexion with the truest courage. After his return home from his last voyage he was attacked, when driving with his youngest daughter, upon one of his excursions in the bush, by two famous bush rangers Wormley and Webber, part of a gang who for a period of two years kept the whole country in a state of terror. One of the ruffians presented a loaded pistol at his breast and another at his daughter's, threatening with horrid imprecations to shoot them both, if they said a word, and bidding his daughter to empty her father's pockets into their hands. Perfectly undismayed, Mr. Marsden remonstrated with them on their wicked course of life, telling them at last that he should soon see them again, he had no doubt, on the gallows. At parting, though charged, with the usual threats, not to look behind him, he turned round, and continued, while they were in sight, to warn them in the same strain of the certain consequences of a life of crime. His admonition was soon verified; the wretched men were apprehended for other outrages and sentenced to death, and he himself attended them from the condemned cell to the place of execution.