In a visit to Dorking, Wesley read Sterne’s “Sentimental Journey,” and writes, “_Sentimental!_ What is that? It is not English; he might as well say _continental_. It is not sense. It conveys no determinate idea; yet one fool makes many, and this nonsensical word (who would believe it?) is become a fashionable one! However, the book agrees full well with the title; for one is as queer as the other. For oddity, uncouthness, and unlikeness to all the world beside, I suppose the writer is without a rival.” This was a bold criticism on Laurence Sterne, and his recently published book, which was now immensely popular. On his return from Dorking, on February 12, Wesley writes: “I read a very different book, published by an honest quaker, on that execrable sum of all villanies, commonly called the slave trade. I read of nothing like it in the heathen world, whether ancient or modern; and it infinitely exceeds, in every instance of barbarity, whatever Christian slaves suffer in Mahommedan countries.” This is a remarkable utterance. It was in this very year that Granville Sharpe, the first of the English antislavery advocates, began to take up the subject; and it was not until fifteen years after this, that the “Society for the Suppression of the Slave Trade” was founded, of which, besides Sharpe, two of the chief members were Thomas Clarkson, a young graduate of Cambridge, and William Wilberforce, who was then M.P. for the county of York. The book which Wesley read was probably written by Anthony Benezet, a French protestant, who, after being educated in England, became a quaker in Philadelphia; and, in 1762, published the work which first attracted the attention of this country[153] to the inhuman traffic, which Wesley so justly designates “that execrable sum of all villanies.” Let it be noted that, besides all his other honours, John Wesley, the poor, persecuted Methodist, was one of the first advocates on behalf of the enthralled African that England had, and that, sixty years before slavery was abolished in the dominions of Great Britain, he denounced the thing in the strongest terms it was possible to employ. Before we accompany Wesley on his long northern tour, three other facts, belonging to this period, may be briefly mentioned. Ten years ago, Thomas Maxfield had dishonourably forsaken his old friend, and had set up a rival church in the neighbourhood of Moorfields. For some reason, he now seemed to desire a reunion. Wesley was not the man to repel an overture even from one whose behaviour had been ungrateful and treacherous. He met Maxfield; but writes: “He only _seemed_ to desire a reunion; for when we explained upon the head, I found he meant just nothing.”