minister.  The grounds of ill-will and persecution were political rather than personal.  It is strongly suspected that these fires were, in every instance, the deed of incendiaries.  The rector’s cattle had been mutilated.  The children had curses flung at them in the street, and on occasion of Mr. Wesley’s absence at Lincoln to record his vote, many cowardly devices were resorted to by way of alarming the family at all hours of the night.  One new-born child had been, owing to Mrs. Wesley’s exhaustion and danger, committed to the care of a nurse.  This poor woman, losing sleep by the cruel noises purposely raised outside, at last, far in the night, fell into a heavy slumber and “overlaid the child.”  Cold and dead, they brought it to the poor mother.

It was political spite, also, that was at the bottom of the conduct of a creditor, who caused the rector to be arrested for debt, at the church door, after a baptismal service, and hurried off to Lincoln Castle, “leaving his lambs among so many wolves.”  In prison Mr. Wesley engaged in an earnest work of evangelising his “brother jail-birds,” as he called them; his conduct at this period more than realising the world-renowned picture which Goldsmith has drawn of his incarcerated Vicar of Wakefield.  Susanna Wesley now strove to support herself and her children by means of the diary, but, fearing lest her husband should be pining in want, she sent to him her wedding-ring, beseeching him by this to get a little money for his comfort.  He returned it with words of tender gratitude, saying that “God would soon provide.”  Indeed, being by this time regarded as a martyr to his political principles, he was approached by some brethren of the clergy seeking to deliver him, and an arrangement was made, after three months, by which he was liberated.

V.

THE SCHOOL IN THE HOME.

It would appear that, ultimately, the family of Susanna Wesley was almost as numerous as that of her father had been.  A singular want of accuracy characterises all the records, but it is safe to say that her children were some eighteen or nineteen in number.  Death came often during those years of persecution.  John Wesley speaks of the serenity with which his mother “worked among her thirteen children;” but ten was the number of those who were spared to enjoy the blessing of that enlightened, affectionate, and admirable training on her part, which has been so fully recorded, and of which the fruits were witnessed especially in the eminence of her sons Charles and John.  She paid the utmost attention to physical training.  Punctuality in the hours of sleep was carefully carried out from infancy through the years that followed.  The rules regarding food were all admirable, and the younger children were early promoted to a place at the parents’ own table.  Mrs. Wesley has committed all these matters to writing, and her own words are valuable for their wisdom.