Thus things proceeded. England was flooded with political pamphlets; the houses of parliament echoed with the sonorous periods of senatorial oratory; and the hill sides and river banks of America rang with sharp and dissonant peals of musketry. Blood had been shed at Lexington; and, at the bungling battle at Bunker Hill, the English had lost 1050 men, in killed and wounded. In the month of November, Wesley says: “I was desired to preach, in Bethnal Green church, a charity sermon for the widows and orphans of the soldiers that were killed in America. Knowing how many would seek occasion of offence, I wrote down my sermon.” The discourse was immediately published, with the title, “A Sermon preached at St. Matthew’s, Bethnal Green, on Sunday, November 12, 1775. By John Wesley, M.A. For the benefit of the widows and orphans of the soldiers who lately fell near Boston, in New England.” 8vo, 33 pages. Wesley speaks of the terrible distress from which the nation was suffering. Thousands were totally unemployed. He had seen not a few of them “standing in the streets, with pale looks, hollow eyes, and meagre limbs.” He says, he had “known families, who, a few years ago, lived in an easy, genteel manner,” driven to the necessity of repairing to the fields “to pick up the turnips which the cattle had left: and which they boiled, if they could get a few sticks for that purpose, or otherwise ate them raw.” Thousands had “screamed for liberty till they were utterly distracted, and their intellects quite confounded.” “In every town, men, who were once of a calm, mild, friendly temper, were now mad with party zeal, foaming with rage against their quiet neighbours, ready to tear out one another’s throats, and to plunge their swords into each other’s bowels.” He then proceeds to descant, in withering terms, on the sins of the nation,--money getting, lying, gluttony, idleness, and profanity. The sermon altogether, considering the time and circumstances of its delivery, was one of the boldest he ever preached; and, of course, added to the rage that his “Calm Address” had kindled. The _Gospel Magazine_, in reviewing it, remarks: “So many barrels of _tar_ have of late been lavished on Mr. Wesley, and so many bags of _feathers_ have been shaken over him, on account of his new political apostasy, that it might seem unmerciful in us, should we add to the _anointings_ and to the _powderings_, which he has already so plentifully, though not undeservedly, received. We shall therefore, from a principle of compassion, touch his sermon with the tenderer hand, and let the sermoniser himself very lightly off, the enormity of his demerits considered.” And then the tender reviewer, in his unmerited compassion, proceeds to describe “the sermon as being as dry as an old piece of leather that has been tanned five thousand times over”; and the preacher as “a tip-top _perfectionist_ in the art of lying.” All this revives a recollection of “The Old Fox tarred