To the Rev.G.Browne (ENDORSED:recd.July 1,1839)SEVILLE,PLAZUELA DE LA PILA SECA,No.7,JUNE 12,1839.
REVD.AND DEAR SIR,-I received in due course of time your exceedingly kind letter of the 16th April,and am very grateful for the various intelligence which you were pleased to communicate.Ishould have replied ere this;but I am one of those,as I believe you are aware,who are averse to writing,especially from a considerable distance,unless they possess matter of sufficient consequence to fill creditably the pages of an epistle.I could wish that at the present moment I had more to write upon,and more interesting details to send you than these which follow.For two or three weeks after my arrival at Seville I was unable to accomplish anything,on account of the seizure of the books,with which you are doubtless acquainted.I however by the assistance of the Almighty,for which I prayed,was enabled,though not without considerable trouble,to overcome that difficulty,and to obtain all the Testaments of which I was in need,to the number of two hundred and upwards.But still I commenced not operations;indeed I was quite at a loss,being in a strange place and under very peculiar circumstances,to imagine the best course to pursue.Itherefore waited with perfect patience until it should please Providence to assist me,and true it is that help came in rather a remarkable manner.
I was standing in the courtyard of the Reyna POSADA,where for the time I had taken up my abode,when a man singularly dressed and gigantically tall entered.My curiosity being excited,I enquired of the master of the house who he was,when he informed me that he was a foreigner who had resided a considerable time in Seville,and he believed a Greek.Upon hearing this I instantly went up to the stranger,and accosted him in the Greek language in which,though Ispeak it very ill,I can make myself understood.He replied in the same idiom,and,flattered by the interest which I a foreigner expressed for his nation,was not slow in communicating to me his history.He told me,that his name was Dionysius;that he was a native of Cephalonia,and had been educated for the Church,which however not suiting his temper,he had abandoned in order to follow the profession of the sea,for which he had an early inclination;that after many adventures and changes of fortune he found himself one morning on the coast of Spain -a shipwrecked mariner;and that,ashamed to return to his own country in poverty and distress,he had remained in the Peninsula,residing chiefly at Seville,where he now carried on a small trade in books.He said that he was of the Greek religion,to which he professed strong attachment,and soon discovering that I was a Protestant,spoke with unbounded abhorrence of the Papal system,nay of its followers in general,whom he called Latins,and whom he charged with the ruin of his own country,inasmuch as they sold it to the Turk.It instantly struck me that this individual would be an excellent assistant in the work which had brought me to Seville,namely the propagation of the eternal Gospel;and accordingly after some more conversation,in which he exhibited considerable learning,I explained myself to him.He entered into my views with considerable eagerness;and hitherto I have had no reason to repent my confidence,he having disposed of a considerable number of New Testaments,and even contrived to send a certain number of copies to two small towns,at some distance from Seville.