And yet a spirit still and bright, With something of an angel light." Well might she attract the regards and win the affections of Samuel Wesley! A minister of the Established Church, though, like herself, brought up among the Dissenters, Mr. Wesley was a curate in London, with an income of thirty pounds, increased to sixty by his writings. He was introduced to Miss Annesley by her brother-in-law, John Dunton, with whom he had become associated by his publications. No higher meed did his literary labors ever bring him than this acquaintance, which soon ripened into a mutual attachment. In 1690, about six years before her father's death, Susannah Annesley left the untroubled home of her early years, and became the wife of Samuel Wesley. A year or two was spent in London at lodgings, and then Mr. Wesley removed to South Ormsby, about ten miles from the Humber, where he lived for five years, the income of the living being fifty pounds. Mr. Wesley's pen was not idle, and a heroic poem, in ten books, on the life of our Savior, dedicated to Queen Mary, so won her favor that she presented him the living of Epworth, to which was afterward added that of Wroote.

The rectory at Epworth was a humble building of timber and plaster, roofed with thatch, and boasting an antiquity of a hundred years. Besides the hall, and parlor, and buttery, there were three large upper rooms, and others of common use. The rector made the exterior attractive and pleasant by planting wall-fruit on each side of the house, and mulberry, pear, and cherry trees in the garden.

In the year 1701 the conjugal harmony at Epworth was disturbed by the following incident.

"Sukey," said Mr. Wesley to his wife, one morning after family prayers, "why did you not say amen to the prayer for the King?"

came. It was the last of July; the weather had been very hot and dry. Mrs. Wesley was in the study with her children, her husband having gone to visit a sick person, when fire broke out in the floor under their feet. Mrs. Wesley took two of the children in her arms, and calling to the rest to follow, ran through the smoke and fire. One child left in the burning house was rescued by the neighbors, who also saved the books and papers of the rector, and most of his goods. The fire, which was kindled by some sparks falling on the dry thatch, consumed one wing of the house, and into the remaining portion the family were crowded.

In 1709 a still more disastrous fire took place. Mrs. Wesley, who was ill at the time, was awakened by her husband, who was gathering the children together to save them from the devouring element. Unable, from her weakness, to climb to the window through which they escaped, she endeavored three times to make her way to the street door, but was as often beaten back by the fury of the flames. In her distress she besought her blessed Savior, if it was his will, to preserve her from that death, and then waded through the fire, which only scorched her hands and her face. How affecting was the father's thanksgiving when they brought to him John, the little fellow of five, the last rescued from the falling house! "Come, neighbors, let us kneel down; let us give thanks to God. He has given me all my eight children; let the house go; I am rich enough." Without a roof to shelter them, the children formed temporary homes among neighbors and relations, and Mrs. Wesley saw with pain the good habits she had carefully cultivated injured by indiscriminate association with others.

Mr. Wesley rebuilt the parsonage-house in a year, and the family removed into it, "with very little more," said he, "than Adam and Eve had

In that case," said he, "we must part." Mrs. Wesley, with her usual conscientiousness, was inflexible, and the loyal rector-the first man in England who wrote in favor of the Revolution of 1688-unable to influence the opinions of his own household, set out for London, where, being convocation-man for the diocese of Lincoln, he remained a year without visiting his own house. On the 8th of March, 1702, King William died, and as Mrs. Wesley could now, with a good conscience, say amen to the prayer for Queen Anne, the family at Epworth were once more gladdened by the presence of the husband and father.

Before many months, however, a new trial

clothes, books, and papers, all were gone, and their limited income was insufficient to make good these losses, so that for many years the rectory was but half furnished, and Mrs. Wesley and her children but scantily clothed. The living at Epworth was not worth more than one hundred and thirty pounds, and that of Wroote, situated in the low fens of Lincolnshire, where the produce was frequently swept away by inundations, barely sufficed to pay expenses.

"My lord, I will freely own to your grace," said Mrs. Wesley to the Archbishop of York, in answer to his question whether she had ever been in want of bread, "that, strictly speaking, I never did want bread; but then I have had so much

a good part of it, and how would that edify the rest? But there is one thing about which I am much dissatisfied; that is, their being present at family prayers. I do not speak of any concern I am under, barely because so many are present; for those who have the honor of speaking to the great and holy God need not be ashamed to speak before the whole world, but because of my sex. I doubt if it be proper for me to present the prayers of the people to God. Last Sunday I fain would have dismissed them before prayers, but they begged so earnestly to stay that I durst not deny them."

This calm and forcible reasoning commended itself to Mr. Wesley's judgment; but after he had written his letter of approval, his high Church principles took the alarm at some complaints made by the curate of the parish-who confined his preaching to one topic, the duty of paying one's debts-and some others, and he desired his wife to discontinue the meetings. Her answer exhibits her piety and zeal, as well as her good sense and deference to her husband's rightful authority. After wondering that he should be induced by the senseless clamors of two or three of the worst of the parish to condemn what he lately approved, she alludes to the good effects resulting from the afternoon gatherings-the harmony in the parish, the congregation of two or three hundred at evening service instead of twenty or twenty-five, the opportunity afforded her of exercising to the people the greatest and noblest charity, that is, charity to their souls, and the regular attendance on the Church of many families who seldom went there before. "If you do, after all," she says in conclusion, "think fit to dissolve this assembly, do not tell me that you desire me to do it, for that will not satisfy my conscience. But send me your positive command, in such full and express terms, as may absolve me from all guilt and punishment for neglecting this opportunity of doing good, when you and I shall appear before the great and awful tribunal of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Most characteristic is this letter, manifesting high principle and conscientiousness, and yet a willingness to submit, if needs be, to rightful authority. The rector, it seems, was unwilling to assume the great responsibility thrown upon him by his wife, and the meetings were continued till his return. "It was evident," writes Dr. Clarke, "that God had done more in a few months by this irregular ministry than he had done by that of the rector and his curates for eighteen years before." John Wesley said of his mother "that even she, as well as her father and grandfather,

her husband and three sons, had been in her measure a preacher of righteousness.”

A stranger, on entering the rectory at Epworth, might, at the first sight of its half-furnished rooms, have thought it a cheerless home, but he would soon perceive that this was no ordinary household. Peace and quietness reigned there-no child was allowed to cry after it was a year old-the law of order regulated their rising and their rest, their morning and their evening prayers-their simple meals taken with thankful hearts—their hours of study and of exercise. The firm yet gentle influence of the mother harmonized every jarring string, till the family that owned her potent sway had the name of being the most loving family in Lincoln. Her first object was to subdue their wills and bring them to an obedient temper, and that done the rest was comparatively easy. Her remarks on this subject are very forcible, and are quoted by her son, John Wesley, in his sermon on the education of children. "I insist," she says, "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. As self-will is the root of all sin and misery, so whatever cherishes this in children insures their after wretchedness and irreligion; whatever checks and mortifies it promotes their future happiness and piety. This is still more evident if we further consider that religion is nothing else than the 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 indulgences 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, forever."

John Wesley speaks of “the calm serenity with which his mother transacted business, wrote letters, and conversed, surrounded by her thirteen children." The order and system so ingrained in her character enabled her to assign to every duty its own time. The complicated domestic machinery moved on with perfect regularity, and the great results of its harmonious action are even now making glad the earth.

Six hours a day this faithful mother devoted to the education of her children, and no child was allowed to leave its seat in the school-room without permission. The alphabet was taught to the child the day it was five years old; and from letters to words and from words to sentences, he proceeded till he could read well in a quarter of a year. Most of the daughters, as they grew up, had the rare accomplishment of reading with propriety and elegance, and Emilia, the eldest daughter, was said by her brother, John Wesley, to be the best reader of Milton he ever heard. She was remarkable, too, as well as her youngest sister Kezzie, for the beauty of her handwriting. Sons and daughters accomplished and learned testified to the excellence of their mother's educational discipline. She was doing a great work in the rectory at Epworth-a work for which successive generations might call her blessed; and the scholarly rector, with his elaborate dissertations on the book of Job, and his profound studies, would have wondered to see his learned literary labors weighed in the balance of the sanctuary with the daily patient toil of the wife and mother. With the mother of the Gracchi the mother of the Wesleys could say, "These are my jewels," and day after day witnessed her work of faith and labor of love in polishing those precious stones, whose kindling radiance was to flash bright and strong in the eyes of a wondering world, and was afterward, and in a more glorious casket, to be enshrined above, to shine there as the brightness of the firmament, and as the stars, forever and ever. And scarcely ever, in this world's history, has such a group of children demanded a mother's The sketching of this group we must defer to another number.

care.

A MORNING WALK IN MAY.

BY REV. J. T. BARR, A. M. How sweet to inhale the pure breath of the morn, As over the meadows I stray;

To welcome with rapture the sun's bright return,
And contemplate the beauties of May!

No longer the landscape is hid from the sight-
The hovering mists flee away;

And the beams of Aurora besprinkle with light
The blossom-crowned bosom of May.

The nymphs of the village, now blooming in health,
As they trip through the valleys, look gay;
Simplicity's offspring! they thirst not for wealth,
But joy in the frolics of May.

Thou Lord of creation! whose wisdom and power
The beauties of Nature display;

Can I forget thee, while at morning's still hour
I sing the enjoyments of May?

JACQUES BRIDAINE, THE FRENCH WHITE

FIELD.

IXTEEN years ago Macaulay, in one of his

S brilliant essays in "The Edinburgh Review,"

contrasted the different treatment which enthusiasm receives in the Anglican and the Papal Churches. In England if a Wesley, a Whitefield, or a Lady Huntingdon rise up within the pale of the Establishment, inspired with an enthusiasm which chafes against old restrictions and narrow conventionalisms, they must secede, and either join one of the old bodies of Dissenters, or become founders of a new one. "Far different is the policy of Rome. The enthusiast whom the Anglican Church makes an enemy—and whatever the learned and polite may think, a most dangerous enemy-the Catholic Church makes a champion. He costs her nothing. He takes not a ducat away from the revenues of her beneficed clergy. He lives by the alms of those who respect his spiritual character, and are grateful for his instructions. He preaches, not exactly in the style of Massillon, but in a way which moves the passions of uneducated hearers; and all his influ ence is employed to strengthen the Church of which he is a minister. To that Church he becomes as strongly attached as any of the cardinals whose scarlet carriages and liveries crowd the entrance of the palace on the Quirinal. In this way the Church of Rome unites in herself all the strength of an establishment, and all the strength of dissent. With the utmost pomp of a dominant hierarchy above she has all the energy of the voluntary system below." Many familiar names at once suggest themselves in illustration of these statements. Jacques Bridaine, little known as he is, may be added to the list.

It may be doubted whether morality and relig ion were ever at a lower ebb, in any country of any age, than in France during the first half of the last century. The court was a mere hot-bed of prodigious vices and monstrous crimes. Profligacy, without parallel since the days of Tiberius and Nero, not merely existed but was gloried in. The highest personages in the realm set an example of wickedness which spread like a pestilence throughout all ranks and classes of society. The Catholic clergy either connived at these iniquities, or, with a shameless effrontery, shared in them. It was among the dignitaries of the Church that Voltaire found his earliest instructors in infidelity and licentiousness; and to the close of his career they furnished his most ardent admirers. The salons of the infidel party in Paris were thronged with sympathizing priests and abbes. What little