No wonder that Samuel Wesley was passionately attached to such a wife. She was in her person not only graceful but beautiful. Sir Peter Lely, the painter of the “beauties” of his age, has left a portrait of her sister Judith, representing her as a lady of rare charms; and yet one who knew them both has said, “Beautiful as Miss Annesley appears, she was far from being as beautiful as Mrs Wesley.” If her husband had not loved and respected her as much as she loved and respected him, he would have been unworthy of her. Four years after their marriage, and when cooped up in the miserable little parsonage at South Ormsby, Mr Wesley published his “Life of Christ,” in which there is the following poetic portrait of his noble-hearted wife, and of the sort of life they lived in their humble hut, near the shores of the German sea:— “She graced my humble roof, and blest my life, Blest me by a far greater name than wife; Yet still I bore an undisputed sway, Nor was’t her task, but pleasure, to obey; Scarce thought, much less could act, what I denied, In our low house there was no room for pride; Nor need I e’er direct what still was right, She studied my convenience and delight. Nor did I for her care ungrateful prove, But only used my power to show my love. Whate’er she asked I gave, without reproach or grudge, For still she reason asked, and I was judge. All my commands, requests at her fair hands, And her requests to me were all commands. To others thresholds rarely she’d incline. Her house her pleasure was, and she was mine; Rarely abroad, or never, but with me, Or when by pity called, or charity.” Such was the nuptial life of Samuel and Susanna Wesley. They were married about the year 1689, but where and by whom there is no evidence to show. For about forty-six years they bravely battled with their domestic trials, and, after a seven years’ separation, were, in 1742, reunited in that happy world, where “the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest.” “No man,” says Southey, “was ever more suitably mated than Samuel Wesley. The wife whom he chose was, like himself, the child of a man eminent among the Nonconformists, and, like himself, in early life she had chosen her own path. She had examined the controversy between the Dissenters and the Church of England with conscientious diligence, and satisfied herself that the schismatics were in the wrong. She had reasoned herself into Socinianism, from which her husband reclaimed her. She was an admirable woman, an obedient wife, an exemplary mother, and a fervent Christian. The marriage was blest in all its circumstances; it was contracted in the prime of their youth; it was fruitful and death did not divide them till they were full of days.”