as we crept blithely along the road that gradually swept up from the ferry. Our sensations we will not attempt to describe as we paced the pathway of the quiet old country town, where the first relic we picked up was the characteristic one of a torn page of the New Testament. Enthusiasm upon paper is vapid as the lees of wine; it wants the first element of enthusiasm-life. The imagination of our readers must supply the want of graphic power in our pen. Suffice it to say that it was with more than common emotion we looked upon the font where the man whose genius made the celebrity of the place had been baptized; upon the communion table where Wesley had often officiated, yet whence he had been rudely repulsed by an intemperate and ungrateful priest, who had owed his all to the Wesleys; on the tombstone of his father, which on that occasion and subsequently served the itinerant John for a pulpit, from which he addressed weeping multitudes in the churchyard; on the withered sycamore beneath whose shade he must have played; and finally, through the courtesy of the rector, the Hon. and Rev. Charles Dundas, on the parsonage, now scarcely recognizable for the same from the improvement it has received at the hand of wealth guided by the eye of taste, though old Jeffrey's room still retains much of its ghostliness. The day that revealed to us all these and sundry memorabilities is one to be noted with chalk in our calendar.

The lower ground of the isle of Axholme, in the midst of which Epworth stands, had from time immemorial been subject to almost constant submersion from the river, and was little better than a Mere, the title Leland gives it in his Itinerary. Its value, however, was so obvious to the eyes of both natives and foreigners that a charter to drain this whole country side was given to Cornelius Vermuyden in the time of the Stuarts, and the thing was done, to the rescue of a considerable part of the king's chase from the dominion of the lawless waters, and to the increase of the arable and pasture land of the neighbourhood to the extent of many thousand acres of a fine rich brown loam, than which there is none more fertile in England. To this parish the father of our hero was presented in the year 1693 as a reward for his merits in defending from the press the Revolution of 1688. The living was of inconsiderable amount, under 2007. per annum, but by no means contemptible to a waiter upon Providence, whose clerical income had never before averaged 50l. per year, and was the more agreeable as it promised to lead to something better, since the ground of his present advancement was the recognition in high places of the opportune loyalty of the literary parson. Here, with a regularly increasing family, without any corresponding increase of stipend, the exemplary rector laboured for ten years ere

the

the birth of his son John, contending with low wants and lofty will,' with the dislike and opposition of his unruly parishioners, with his own chafed tempers and disappointed expectations, with serious inroads upon his income by fire and flood, and with the drag-chain of a poverty that pressed upon the means of subsistence, and which his literary labours availed little to lighten. Few things are more impressive than the peep he gives us into his domestic history in his half jocular, half serious defence from the ungenerous charges of his elder brother Matthew, that he had not turned his resources to such good account for his family as he might have done. He calls his letter John O'Style's apology against the imputation of his ill husbandry.'

After some prelimininary matter, he thus proceeds :

'When he first walked to Oxford he had in cash 27. 5s.

'He lived there till he took his bachelor's degree, without any preferment or assistance except one crown.

'By God's blessing, on his own industry, he brought to London 107. 15s.

'When he came to London he got deacon's orders and a cure, for which he had 287. in one year; in which year for his board, ordination and habit, he was indebted 307l., which he afterwards paid.

'Then he went to sea, where he had for one year 70l., not paid till two years after his return.

'He then got a curacy of 30%. per annum, for two years, and by his own industry he made it 60l. per annum.

'He married and had a son, and he and his wife and child boarded for some years in or near London, without running into debt.

'He then had a living given him in the country, let for 50l. per annum, where he had five children more; in which time, and while he lived in London, he wrote a book which he dedicated to Queen Mary, who gave him a living in the country [Epworth], valued at 2007. per annum, where he remained for nearly forty years, and wherein his numerous offspring amounted with the former to nineteen children.

'Half of his parsonage-house was first burnt, which he rebuilt; some time after the whole was burnt to the ground, which he rebuilt from the foundations, and it cost him above 400l., besides the furniture, none of which was saved; and he was forced to renew it.

'Some years after he got a little living [Wroote] adjoining to his former, the profits of which very little more than defrayed the expenses of serving it, and sometimes hardly so much, his whole tithe having been in a manner swept away by inundations, for which the parishioners had a brief; though he thought it not decent for himself to be joined with them in it.

Many years he has been employed in composing a large book,b whereby he hopes that he may be of some benefit to the world, and in

a The Life of Christ.

b Dissertations on Job.

a degree

a degree amend his own fortunes. By sticking so close to his work he has broke a pretty strong constitution, and fallen into the palsy and gout. Besides, he has had sickness in his family, for the most of the years since he was married.

'His greater living seldom cleared more than five score pounds per annum, out of which he allowed 201. a-year to a person who married one of his daughters. Could we on the whole fix the balance, it would easily appear whether he has been an ill husband, or careless and idle, and taken no care of his family.

'Let all this be balanced, and then a guess may easily be made of his sorry management. He can struggle with the world but not with providence; nor can he resist sickness, fires, and inundations.'

The defence is able and satisfactory, and our sympathies gather round the busy bee' whose active industry and zeal could not shield his hive from spoliation and misfortune, while many a contemporary drone surfeited in abundance, and wore out a useless life in luxury, self-indulgence, and criminal ease. Ere his son John, the future father of Methodism, had completed his third year, the rector of Epworth was in gaol for debt. The exasperation of party, which he took no means to allay but rather chafed and provoked, for he gloried in his church and state politics' being 'sufficiently elevated,' brought down upon him the unmanly vengeance of his creditors, and they spited their political opponent by throwing him into prison. This affliction brought him friends, who succeeded in procuring his release after an incarceration of some months, but neither enlarged his resources, nor increased his prudence. He seems to have been a stern if a faithful pastor, and when called to encounter prejudices, to have met them with prejudices as virulent of his own.

Into such a home as all this bespeaks, needy but not sordid, poverty-stricken yet garnished by high principle and dogged resolution, full of anxieties for temporal provision, yet free from the discontent that dishonours God, was John Wesley ushered, on the 17th of June, 1703. For all that made the comfort of that home, the joy of his childhood and the glory of his riper years, the great reformer was indebted to his mother, as who, that is ever great or good, is not.

Never was child more fortunate in a maternal guide than young Wesley, and never could mother claim more exclusively the credit of her son's early training. At eleven years of age he left home for the Charterhouse-school, London, but up to that period he was educated by his mother. Literary composition, correspondence, and parochial and secular duties fully employed his father; but amid the domestic cares of fifteen living children, his pious and

John O'Style's Dissertations.

gifted mother found time to devote six hours daily to the education of her family. We scarcely know where we could light upon a document which can parallel with this which we subjoin, for its good sense, piety, and sound appreciation of the infant mind.

6

'In order to form the mind of children,' observes this excellent mother and teacher, in a letter to her son in after years explanatory of her method of procedure, the first thing to be done is to conquer their will. To inform the understanding is the work of time, and must with children proceed by slow degrees, as they are able to bear it; but the subjecting the will is a thing that must be done at once, and the sooner the better; for, by neglecting timely correction, they will contract a stubbornness and obstinacy which are hardly ever after conquered; and never without using such severity as would be as painful to me as to the child. In the esteem of the world they pass for kind and indulgent whom I call cruel parents, who permit their children to get habits which they know must be afterwards broken. When the will of a child is subdued, and it is brought to revere and stand in awe of its parents, then a great many childish follies and inadvertencies may be passed by. Some should be overlooked and others reproved: but no wilful transgression ought to be forgiven children without chastisement less or more, as the nature and circumstances of the offence may require. I insist upon conquering the will of children betimes, because this is the only strong and rational foundation of a religious education, without which both precept and example will be ineffectual. But when this is thoroughly done, then a child is capable of being governed by the reason and piety of its parents, till its own understanding comes to maturity, and the principles of religion have taken root in the mind.

'I cannot dismiss this subject yet. As self-will is the root of all sin and misery, so whatever cherishes this in children ensures their wretchedness and irreligion; whatever checks and mortifies it promotes their future happiness and piety. This is still more evident if we consider that religion is nothing else than doing the will of God, and not our own; that the one grand impediment to our temporal and eternal happiness being this self-will, no indulgence of it can be trivial, no denial unprofitable. Heaven or hell depends on this alone. So that the parent who studies to subdue it in his child, works together with God in the renewing and saving a soul. The parent who indulges it, does the devil's work, makes religion impracticable, salvation unattainable, and does all that in him lies to damn his child, soul and body, for ever.

'Our children were taught, as soon as they could speak, the Lord's Prayer, which they were made to say at rising and bed time constantly; to which, as they grew older, were added a short prayer for their parents, and some portion of Scripture, as their memories could bear. They were very early made to distinguish the Sabbath from other days. They were taught to be still at family prayers, and to ask a blessing immediately after meals, which they used to do by signs before they could kneel or speak. They were quickly made to understand that they

should

should have nothing they cried for, and instructed to speak respectfully for what they wanted.'

We must be excused for making one other short extract, on the ground of its great wisdom and beauty. Among several bye laws enumerated for the government of the children, the following

Occur:

3. That no child should ever be chid or beat twice for the same fault; and that if they amended, they should never be upbraided with it afterwards.

4. That every signal act of obedience, especially when it crossed their own inclinations, should be always commended, and frequently rewarded, according to the merits of the case.

'5. That if ever any child performed an act of obedience, or did any thing with an intention to please, though the performance was not well, yet the obedience and intention should be kindly accepted, and the child with sweetness directed how to do better in future.'

There is much more of equal excellence, but we forbear. Passing from under the tutelage of his accomplished mother, young Wesley became at the Charterhouse a sedate, quiet, and industrious pupil. The regularity of system which characterised the man was even then visible in the boy, taking his methodical race round the garden thrice every morning. His excellent habits were rewarded by the esteem of his masters, and his election six years afterwards to Christ's Church College, Oxford. At the University he maintained the reputation for scholarship acquired at school, and ere long was chosen a Fellow of Lincoln, and appointed Greek Lecturer and Moderator of the Classes to the University. And here properly begins the religious life of the young reformer. Prior to his ordination, which took place in 1725, he had devoted himself to such a course of reading as he considered most likely to conduce to his spiritual benefit, and qualify him for his sacred office. Upon the mind of one so religiously and orderly brought up, the Ascetic Treatises of Thomas a Kempis, and Taylor's Holy Living and Dying, would naturally make a deep impression, the more as their earnest strain would contrast so favourably with the epicurean insouciance, or the stolid fatalism of his classic favourites. The highest effort of Pagan heroism and philosophy was to invite their dead to the feast and orgie, and mock at death by crowning him with flowers, while of all the sublimer objects of life they were as ignorant as to its more serious duties they were unequal. Surfeited with their dainties which he had relished as a child, when he became a man he put away childish things with the loathing of a matured and higher taste. Assistant to his father for two years in the adjacent living of Wroote, and engaged thus in the actualities of the ministry, his

soul