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THE

WESLEYAN-METHODIST MAGAZINE.

SEPTEMBER, 1847.

BIOGRAPHY.

MEMOIR OF MR. ROBERT POULSOM,

OF WINCHESTER.

MR. POULSOM was a native of Winchester, and was born in the year 1762. His parents being respectable, he received a liberal education. When nine or ten years of age he lost his mother, who had fixed all her earthly hopes on him, having been deprived of her first-born son in infancy; and before he was fourteen, he was called from school to attend the death-bed of his only-surviving parent. Of this event he has been heard in after-life thus to speak: "Whilst my father's friends were buoying him up with the hope of recovery, I retired to an adjoining room; and if ever I prayed in my life, I prayed then." The circumstance shows that even then his mind was influenced by religious feeling, and that he had a strong sense of the divine all-sufficiency, and the necessity of prayer. Mr. Poulsom, sen., anxious to secure to his son the protection which his situation required, left him in the care of two guardians and an executrix, that he might, at the proper time, realize the ample fortune (as it was considered in those days) which was bequeathed him. However, through circumstances, into which it is not necessary to enter here, when he became of age, he had to receive but little in comparison of what he should have inherited. Still, he moved in a respectable circle. He was considered as an amiable young man, and his conduct was free from immorality. But his usual companions were gay, and with them he mostly associated till spiritual convictions, which he could not shake off, and which told him that this was not the right path to pursue, even in the search of happiness, produced a salutary alteration before his habits became confirmed. He regularly attended public worship at the cathedral; and it was there that he received his first decided impressions concerning religion. On one occasion he was so powerfully affected, that, at the conclusion of the service, he retired into the adjoining buryingground, and walked about in serious reflection. But he remembered the known inconsistencies of the Minister's life; and contrasting it with his own circumspection, he drew so favourable a conclusion respecting himself, that the feelings which, under better guidance, and with evangelical instruction, might have led him to his Saviour, and issued in his conversion, became, for the time, fruitless, and even in some respects injurious, by strengthening his self-confidence. At

VOL. III.-FOURTH SERIES.

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