In the year of Wesley’s nativity, his father was writing his “History of the Old and New Testament, in Verse;” and also had the pleasure or mortification (we hardly know which) of having his pamphlet on Dissenting academies surreptitiously published by a man to whom it had long before been sent as a private letter. Before Wesley was three years old his father was ruthlessly thrust into gaol for debt; and before he was six the parsonage was destroyed by fire. When the fire occurred, his brother Charles was an infant not two months old, and he, with John, three of their sisters, and their nurse, were all in the same room, and fast asleep. Being aroused, the nurse seized Charles, and bid the others follow. The three sisters did as they were bidden, but John was left sleeping. The venerable rector counted heads, and found John was wanting. At the same instant, a cry was heard. The frantic father tried to ascend the burning stairs, but found it to be impossible. He then dropped upon his knees in the blazing hall, and despairing of the rescue of his child, commended him to God. Meanwhile John had mounted a chest and was standing at the bedroom window. Quick as thought, one man placed himself against the wall, and another stood upon his shoulders, and just a moment before the roof fell in with a fearful crash the child was rescued through the window, and safely “plucked as a brand from the burning” house. Our information respecting Wesley’s childhood is extremely limited. If we strip off all the luxuriant verbiage in which imaginative writers have indulged, the naked facts are the following. Wesley, like all the other members of his father’s family, was indebted for his elementary education to his mother. The principles upon which she acted were unique. When the child was one year old, he was taught to fear the rod, and, if he cried at all, to cry in softened tones. Wesley long afterwards, in his sermon on the education of children, enforces his mother’s practice, urging parents never to give a child a thing for which it cries, on the ground that to do so would be a recompence for crying, and he would certainly cry again. Another of Mrs. Wesley’s principles of action was to limit her children to three meals a day. Eating and drinking between meals was strictly prohibited. All the children were washed and put to bed by eight o’clock, and, on no account, was a servant to sit by a child till it fell asleep.