We have said the Revival became conservative. It is true the Countess of Huntingdon did much to make it so; but it assumed a shape of vitality, and a force of coherent strength, chiefly from the touch of Wesley’s administrative mind. The present City Road Chapel, which was opened in 1776, opposite Bunhill Fields Burial Ground, is probably the first illustration of this fact; it stands where stood the Foundry—time-honoured spot in the history of Methodism. It stood in Moorfields; the City Road was a mere lane then. The building had been used by government for casting cannon; it was a rude ruin. Wesley purchased it and the site at the very commencement of his work, in 1739; he turned it into a temple. As the years passed on it became the cradle of London Methodism, accommodating fifteen hundred people. Until within twenty years of Wesley’s purchase this had been a kind of Woolwich Arsenal to the government; it became a temple of peace, and here came “band-rooms,” school-rooms, book-rooms—the first saplings of Methodist usefulness. [Illustration: JOHN WESLEY. ] It has been truly said by a writer in the _British Quarterly_, that the most romantic lives of the saints of the Roman Catholic calendar do not present a more startling succession of incidents than those which meet us in the life and labours of Wesley. Romish stories claim that Blessed Raymond, of Pegnafort, spread his cloak upon the sea to transport him across the water, sailing one hundred and sixty miles in six hours, and entering his convent through closed doors! The devout and zealous Francis Xavier spent three whole days in two different places at the same time, preaching all the while! Rome shines out in transactions like these: Wesley does not; but he seems to have been almost ubiquitous, and he moves with a rapidity reminding us of that flying angel who had the everlasting Gospel to preach, and he shines alike in his conflicts with nature and the still wilder tempests caused by the passions of men. We read of his travelling, through the long wintry hours, two hundred and eighty miles on horseback, in six days; it was a wonderful feat in those times. When Wesley first began his itinerancy there were no turnpikes in the country; but before he closed his career, he had probably paid more, says Dr. Southey, for turnpikes, than any other man in England, for no other man in England travelled so much. His were no pleasant journeys, as of summer days; he travelled through the fens of Lincolnshire when the waters were out; and over the fells of Northumberland when they were covered with snow. Speaking of one tremendous journey, through dreadful weather, he says, “Many a rough journey have I had before; but one like this I never had, between wind and hail, and rain, and ice, and snow, and driving sleet, and piercing cold; but it is past. Those days will return no more, and are therefore as though they had never been. “‘And pain, like pleasure, is a dream!’”