all wealthier, and not much more refined, than small farmers or upper servants. And yet, it was in these rustic priests, who derived their scanty subsistence from their tithe sheaves and tithe pigs, and who had not the smallest chance of ever attaining high professional honours, that the professional spirit was strongest. Among those divines, who were the boast of the universities, and the delight of the capital, a party leaned towards constitutional principles of government, lived on friendly terms with Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists, would gladly have seen a full toleration granted to all Protestant sects, and would even have consented to make alterations in the Liturgy, for the purpose of conciliating honest and candid Nonconformists. But such latitudinarianism was held in horror by the country parson. He was, indeed, prouder of his ragged gown than his superiors of their lawn and of their scarlet hoods. The very consciousness that there was little in his worldly circumstances to distinguish him from the villagers to whom he preached, led him to hold immoderately high the dignity of that sacerdotal office, which was his single title to reverence.” We raise no objection to this graphic description of the country clergy living about the time that Samuel Wesley was appointed to South Ormsby. We believe it to be strictly accurate; and yet to all general rules there are exceptions, and, in this instance, Samuel Wesley was one. It is true that he was poor and pinched. It is quite possible that he sometimes found it necessary to load his dungcart, plough his glebe, and feed his swine; but Samuel Wesley was not the man to waste his time at bowls and shovelboard; or to stoop to the indignity of being regaled, by servants, with cold meat and ale, in the kitchen of the squire’s forbidden hall. His children might be coarsely clad, but his boys never followed the plough, nor did his girls go out to service. His fifty pounds a year might afford him next to nothing to buy books; and yet, somehow he read most of the best books in the English language. He was most faithfully devoted to the service of the Church; but he was far too great a man to think that the mere accidents of the sacerdotal office were sufficient to raise him above his neighbours. He was a country parson; but in learning, mental abilities, and the faithful discharge of ministerial duties, he differed from his country brethren, and was not unworthy to be ranked and associated with the greatest men at that time flourishing in the universities, in cathedrals, and in the capital. He might, like hundreds of others, have spent his time in agricultural toils and village sports, but there was within him the stirring of a high-born genius, which, wherever it exists, invariably impels its possessor to rise above the mediocrity of the common herd, and to attempt something honourable to the man who does it, and of service to those on whose behalf he labours. Human humdrums have always been