“As for the ridicule Cyrus has been exposed to, I do not at all wonder at it. Religion, in its plainest dress, suffers daily from the insolence and ignorance of the world; then how should that person escape, who dares to appear openly in its cause? He will meet with all the mortifications such rebels are able to give, which can be no other than that of finding them wilfully blinding themselves, and running headlong into the gulf of perdition; a melancholy prospect for the honest-hearted man who earnestly desires the salvation of his fellow-creatures.”[96] Here we close these specimens of correspondence. How are they to be interpreted? When begun, John Wesley was a young man, twenty-seven years of age, a fellow and tutor of a college, profoundly pious, and the leader of the Oxford Methodists. His fair correspondent was a young widow, only three years older than himself, the niece of Lord Lansdowne, opulent, talented, accomplished, beautiful, a favourite at court, and an intimate friend of the gentleman who had succeeded to the estates of Garrett Wesley, who had wished to make Wesley’s brother Charles his heir.[97] Did Wesley correspond with Aspasia merely for the improvement of himself in piety and knowledge? And did she correspond with Wesley merely because she sympathised with the principles and practices of the Oxford Methodists? To say the least, this is extremely doubtful. Mary Granville was a talented and accomplished woman, but, in that respect, Wesley was greatly her superior. She was moral, and, upon the whole, religious; but her life, among her aristocratic friends, was fluttering and empty when compared with the intensely religious life of Wesley and his friends at Oxford. The correspondence is a puzzle. There is nothing that is sickly or merely sentimental; but, on both sides, there is an endearment which perplexes. Was Wesley enamoured? And was he groping his way to something else than ordinary friendship? Did Mary Granville experience a reciprocity of feeling? And was the reproach, which began to be heaped upon the Oxford Methodists, the means of quenching it? We know not. But, supposing such conjectures to be true, what then? Was Wesley inconsistent with his principles, or unpardonably ambitious in longing for such an alliance? Or did Mary Granville at all demean herself in reciprocating Wesley’s feelings? We think otherwise. Mary Granville ultimately married Patrick Delany, who, except that he had become rich by already marrying a wealthy widow, was, in no respect, the superior of John Wesley; and, in point of birth, was greatly his inferior; for, while the one was a son of an eminently learned clergyman of the Established Church, the other was the son of a servant to an Irish judge. The suspicions above mentioned are reasonable, though perhaps not true; and they naturally lead the contemplative reader to inquire, if Cyrus had married Aspasia, would