after, as has often made it very unpleasant to me; and I think to have bread on such terms is the next degree of wretchedness to having none at all.” “You are certainly in the right,” replied his lordship, and made her a handsome present, which she had “reason to believe afforded him comfortable reflections before his exit.” It is certain that the Wesley family lived a life of genteel starvation. The worldly circumstances of the clergy are better now. Curates have £100. South Ormsby is worth more than £250; and the rectorship of Epworth is now upwards of £900. But even in our days, the common tradesman exceeds many clergymen of the Church of England, and ministers of other Churches, in his command of real comfort and substantial independence. The former is respectable in moleskin, but the latter must have broad-cloth. This state of matters is intolerable, grossly unjust, and fearfully oppressive—a wrong done not to pastors only, but to society at large; whose interest suffers through theirs. England lodges in palaces and clothes her nobles, bishops, and merchants in purple; while she leaves many of the most pious and laborious ministers of Christ to be fed by the hand of charity, and clothed in the garments which respectability can no longer wear! What a reproach! When shall it be wiped away? Between persons of so much decision and firmness as Mrs. Wesley and her husband, no doubt differences of opinion arose. But they were neither serious nor of long duration. The story about a protracted breach caused by the diversity of their sentiments concerning the revolution of 1688, if it have any foundation in fact, is grossly exaggerated in its details. Samuel Wesley and Susanna Annesley were drawn to each other by love and reverence; and if you want to see a marriage noble in every way, you must go to the rectory at Epworth where this couple lived. Their entire married life is one of the sweetest, tenderest, and noblest on record. Mrs. Wesley was always ready to stand by the rector. “Old as I am,” she writes, “since I have taken my husband ‘for bettor for worse,’ I’ll take my residence with him. Where he lives, will I live; where he dies, will I die; and there will we be buried. God do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part him and me.” These strong feelings of attachment were reciprocated by Mr. Wesley. “The more duty you pay her,” he writes to his son Samuel, “and the more frequently and kindly you write to her, the more you will please your affectionate father.” His picture of a good wife is an ideal description of the blessed virgin; but there is reason to believe that the original from which it was drawn was the rector’s own wife. _A GOOD MOTHER._