On this topic I am the better enabled to write satisfactorily, because of the repeated references to it which I have heard my Father make in after-life. At all times, within my own recollection, he evinced a very marked regard for religion, with a clear apprehension of the great principles of our holy faith, and an ardent desire for the experience of its divine consolations. But he used to refer back, with a kind of longing regret, to the days of his youth, when he had _felt_ the consolations of godliness, and realized the happiness of heavenly meditations. Often (as I have heard him intimate) whilst pursuing his agricultural labours, and not unfrequently, too, when walking to and fro in his night-watch at sea,—he had been privileged to realize that enviable feeling of peaceful happiness, in the lifting up of the heart in pious meditations and communings heavenward, which constitutes at once an experimental evidence and present reward of the reception of the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. For, however it may fall short in the ardency of its perceptions, or however it may be liable to be confounded with the hasty and transient impulses of mere excitement, yet, in its nature, and according to its degree, the feeling thus realized belongs, I doubt not, to that truly enviable class of Christian experiences described by St. Paul, as “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding,” and as the rejoicing “with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” FOOTNOTES: [A] “Memoir of William Scoresby, Esq.” by the late Mr. Samuel Drew, in the “Imperial Magazine,” for 1822. [B] Life of Captain James Cook, by the Rev. G. Young, of Whitby. [C] The title “specksioneer,” derived from the Dutch, is applied to the officer who has special charge of the fishing apparatus, and the conduct of the flensing operations in the fishery. He is also a principal harpooner. CHAPTER II. HIS COMMENCEMENT AND PROGRESS IN WHALE-FISHING ENTERPRISE, AS A COMMANDER. SECTION I.—_Disappointment in his first Command._ In the history of men who, relatively to their prospects by birth, have attained to distinction in life, there will generally be found some special incident, sometimes apparently trifling in itself, or some particular circumstance, or chain of circumstances, in their professional career, on which, under Providence, their fortune manifestly turned. Both the _incident_ and the circumstance referred to were clearly and strikingly marked in my Father’s history. The incident appears in what occasioned the disgust which he took in early life at farming occupations, whereby he was stimulated to enter upon a seafaring life. The _circumstance_, or chain of circumstances, we find in the important preferment which unexpectedly, as to the occasion, was given to him when, over the heads of many associates, he was appointed to his first command.