“Of pearls those everlasting gates are made, Of precious stones the firm foundation’s laid; The walls of jasper, wondrous to behold, The city flames with pure ethereal gold; Through its broad streets a lovely river glides, It in the midst, with crystal streams, divides No solar lamp, or moon’s officious ray, No twinkling stars to make a fainter day; No useless flambeau there, but from the throne A radiant blaze of light profusely shone. Here pious souls shall blissful seats obtain, With God, and with the Lamb, to endless ages reign.” These extracts are given, first, because the book itself is extremely scarce, and not one Methodist in a thousand has ever seen it; and, secondly, as a sort of rebuke to the slap-dash and too sweeping censure pronounced against it in Nicholl’s Literary Anecdotes, namely, that it is “mere pap, or milk and water.” Those three volumes are not the best that Mr Wesley published; but they are better far than scores of similar productions that have had the good fortune to be read, and therefore to be praised. To say the least, every one must admire the unwearied diligence of this impoverished man. He had a large and increasing family, and was £300 in debt; but, instead of sinking under discouragement, he bravely breasts his trials, and, by eagerly seizing those scraps of time which devotion to his clerical duties did not require, he tried to free himself from his distressing embarrassments by writing and publishing, within two short years, four good-sized volumes, besides his “Epistle on Poetry,” consisting of nearly eleven hundred lines. CHAPTER XIII. CONVOCATION—1701, ETC. On three several occasions, Samuel Wesley was elected proctor or convocation man for the diocese of Lincoln. The first of these elections took place in 1701; a second in 1711; the date of the third is doubtful. These three attendances at convocation brought upon him an expenditure of £150, which he could ill afford to bear.