your fortitude and pious resignation to His will with that peace and happiness you so richly merit.  How blest did your delightful and yet dreadful letter from Batavia make us all!  Surely, my beloved boy, you could not for a moment imagine we ever supposed you guilty of the crime of mutiny.  No, no; believe me, no earthly power could have persuaded us that it was possible for you to do anything inconsistent with strict honour and duty.  So well did we know your amiable, steady principles, that we were assured your reasons for staying behind would turn out such as you represent them; and I firmly trust that Providence will at length restore you to those dear and affectionate friends, who can know no happiness until they are blest with your loved society.  Take care of your precious health, my angelic boy.  I shall soon be with you; I have written to Mr. Heywood (your and our excellent friend and protector) for his permission to go to you immediately, which my uncle Heywood, without first obtaining it, would not allow, fearing lest any precipitate step might injure you at present; and I only wait the arrival of his next letter to fly into your arms.  Oh! my best beloved Peter, how I anticipate the rapture of that moment!—­for alas!  I have no joy, no happiness, but in your beloved society, and no hopes, no fears, no wishes, but for you.’

Mr. Heywood’s sisters all address their unfortunate brother in the same affectionate, but less impassioned strain; and a little trait of good feeling is mentioned, on the part of an old female servant, that shows what a happy and attached family the Heywoods were, previous to the melancholy affair in which their boy became entangled.  Mrs. Heywood says, ’my good honest Birket is very well, and says your safe return has made her more happy than she has been for these two and forty years she has been in our family.’  And Miss Nessy tells him, ’Poor Birket, the most faithful and worthiest of servants, desires me to tell you that she almost dies with joy at the thought of your safe arrival in England.  What agony, my dear boy, has she felt on your account! her affection for you knows no bounds, and her misery has indeed been extreme; but she still lives to bless your virtues.’

The poor prisoner thus replies, from his Majesty’s ship Hector, to his ’beloved sisters all’:—­

’This day I had the supreme happiness of your long-expected letters, and I am not able to express the pleasure and joy they afforded me; at the sight of them my spirits, low and dejected, were at once exhilarated; my heart had long and greatly suffered from my impatience to hear of those most dear to me, and was tossed and tormented by the storms of fearful conjecture—­but they are now subsided, and my bosom has at length attained that long-lost serenity and calmness it once enjoyed:  for you may believe me when I say it never yet has suffered any disquiet from my own misfortunes, but from a truly anxious solicitude for, and