influence was in a measure due to the social advantages which they had enjoyed when Oxford students. We, however, have to do with John Wesley as illustrating the England of his day, and we may well begin to use him for our purposes as a traveller. He had been one the greater part of his life; but a good starting point for us will be after his visit to Germany in 1738, immediately after the time from which he dates his conversion. From that day almost till his death in 1791, John Wesley was almost continually on the road, preaching from town to town wherever he could get a hearing. For years he seems to have travelled constantly on horseback, but later in life he made use of a postchaise. The distances he covered are almost incredible. Here is an extract from his Journal, dated August 7, 1759, when he was in his fifty fourth year. “After preaching at four (because of the harvest) I took horse and rode easily to London. _Indeed I wanted a little rest_; having rode in seven months about four and twenty hundred miles.” As we have seen, Wesley often read as he rode, and this practice taught him the value of a slack rein. “I asked myself How is it no horse stumbles when I am reading? No account can possibly be given but this: because I throw the reins on his back. I then set myself to observe; and I aver that in riding about an hundred thousand miles I scarce remember any horse (except two that would fall head over heels anyway) to fall or to make a considerable stumble while I rode with a slack rein. To fancy, therefore, that a tight rein prevents stumbling is a capital blunder. I have repeated the trial more than most men in the kingdom can do. A slack rein will prevent stumbling if anything will. But in some horses nothing can.” But all his rides were not so leisurely, and I will read you an account of a ride in Wales. He started from Shrewsbury at 4 A.M., and at two in the afternoon was forty two or three miles off, preaching in the marketplace at Llanidloes. He and his companions then rode to Fountainhead where he hoped to lodge; but “Mr. B. being unwilling” they remounted at 7 P.M. and rode on to Ross-fair. They missed the track and found themselves at the edge of a bog and had to be put on the right road; again they missed their way, “it being half-past nine.” They did not find Ross-fair till between 11 and 12. When they were in bed the ostler and a miner had a ride on their beasts, and in the morning Wesley found his mare “bleeding like a pig” in the stable, with a wound behind. This was on July 24; on the 27th he was at Pembroke; “I rested that night, having not quite recovered my journey from Shrewsbury to Ross-fair.” He was in his 62d year! The dangers of travel were considerable, and one of the most remarkable facts in regard to Wesley was that he was never molested by highwaymen, who literally swarmed in England throughout the eighteenth century. They were often in league with the post boys, many of whom were highwaymen themselves.