when they wanted clothes, if they were not supplied by individual friends, they represented their necessity to the stewards. St. Francis and his followers did not commit themselves with more confidence to the care of Providence, nor with a more entire disregard of all human means. But the Friars Minorite were marked by their habit for privileged, as well as peculiar persons; and as they professed poverty, the poorer and the more miserable their appearance, the greater was the respect which they obtained from the people. in England rags were no recommendation; and it was found a great inconvenience that the popular itinerants should be clothed in the best apparel, while the usefulness of their fellows, who were equally devoted to the cause, was lessened by the shabbiness of their appearance. To remedy this evil it was at length agreed, that every circuit should allow its preacher three pounds per quarter to provide himself with clothing and books. Not long after this arrangement had been made, Mr. Wesley proposed that Mather should go with him into Ireland on one of his preaching expeditions, and promised that his wife should be supported during his absence. Mather cheerfully consented; but when he came to talk with his friends upon the subject, they cautioned him to beware how he relied for his wife's support upon a mere promise of this kind; for, when Mr Wesley was gone, the matter would rest with the stewards. Upon this Mather thought it necessary to talk with the stewards himself; they asked him how much would be sufficient for his wife; and when he said four shillings a week, they thought it more than could be afforded, and Mather, therefore, refused to undertake the journey. However, in the course of the ensuing year, the necessity of making some provision for the wives of the itinerants was clearly perceived, and the reasonableness of Mather's demand was acknowledged. He was called upon to travel accordingly, and from that time the stated allowance was continued for very many years at the sum which he had fixed. A further allowance was made of twenty shillings a quarter for every child; and when a preacher was at home, the wife was entitled to eighteenpence a day for his board; the computation being four-pence for breakfast, six-pence for dinner, and four-pence each for tea and supper; with the condition, that whenever he was invited out, a deduction was to be made for the meal. But further relief was still necessary for those married preachers who gave themselves up wholly to the service of Methodism. Their boys, when they grew too big to be under the mother's direction, were in a worse state than other children, and were exposed to a thousand temptations, having no father to control and instruct them. "Was it fit," said Wesley, "that the children of those who leave wife, home, and all that is dear, to save souls from death, should want what is needful either for soul or body? Ought not the Society to supply what the parent could not, because of his labours in the Gospel? The preacher, eased of this weight, would go on the more cheerfully, and perhaps many of these children might, in time, fill up the place of those who should have rested from their labours." The obvious remedy was to found a school for the sons of the preachers; and thinking that the wealthier members of the Society would rejoice if an opportunity were given them to separate their children from the contagion of the world, he seems to have hoped that the expenses of the eleemosynary part of the institution might in great measure be defrayed by their means. Some tracts upon education had led him to consider the defects of English schools; the mode of teaching, defective as that is, he did not regard; it was the moral discipline which fixed his attention; and in founding a seminary for his own people, whose steady increase he now contemplated as no longer doubtful, he resolved to provide, as far as possible, against all the evils of the existing institutions. The first point was to find a situation not too far from a great town, which would be very inconvenient for so large a household as he was about to establish, nor yet too near, and much less in it. For in towns the boys, whenever they went abroad, would have too many things to engage their thoughts, which ought, he said, to be diverted as little as possible from the objects of their learning; and they would have too many other children round about them, some of whom they were liable to meet every day, whose example would neither forward them in learning nor in religion. He chose a spot, three miles from Bristol, in the middle of Kingswood, on the side of a small hill, sloping to the west, sheltered from the east and north, and affording room for large gardens. At that time it was quite private and remote from all highways: now the turnpike road passes close beside it, and it is surrounded by a filthy population. He built the house of a size to contain fifty children, besides masters and servants, reserving one room and a little study for his own use. In looking for masters he had the advantage of being acquainted with every part of the nation; and yet he found it no easy thing to procure such as he desired-men of competent acquirements, "who were truly devoted to God, who sought nothing on earth, neither pleasure, nor ease, nor profit, nor the praise of men." The first rule respecting scholars was, that no child should be admitted after he was twelve years old; before that age, it was thought he could not well be rooted either in bad habits or ill principles; he resolved also, not to receive any that came to hand, but, if possible," only such as had some thoughts of God, and some desire of saving their souls; and such, whose parents desired they should not be almost, but altogether Christians." The proposed object was, "to answer the design of Christian education, by framing their minds, through the help of God, to wisdom and holiness, by instilling the principles of true religion, speculative and practical, and training them up in the ancient way, that they might be rational, scriptural Christians." Accordingly he proclaimed, that the children of tender parents had no business there, and that no child should be received, unless his parents would agree that he should observe all the rules of the house, and that they would not take him from school, no, not for a day, till they took him for good and all. "The reasonableness of this uncommon rule," says Wesley," is shown by constant experience; for children may unlearn as much in one week, as they have learned in several; nay, and contract a prejudice to exact discipline which never can be removed." Had Wesley been a father, he would have perceived that such a rule is unreasonable, and felt that it is abominable: uncommon, unhappily, it is not, for it makes a part of VOL. II. 10 D the Jesuit establishments, and was adopted also by Buonaparte as part of his plan for training up an army of Mamelukes in Europe; no rule could better forward the purpose of those who desire to enslave mankind. The children were to rise at four, winter and summer: this, Wesley said, he knew by constant observation, and by long experience, to be of admirable use either for preserving a good, or improving a bad constitution: and he affirmed, that it was of peculiar service in almost all nervous complaints, both in preventing and in removing them. They were to spend the time till five in private, partly in reading, partly in singing, partly in prayer, and in selfexamination and meditation, those that were capable of it. Poor boys! they had better have spent it in sleep. From five till seven they breakfasted and walked, or worked, the master being with them; for the master was constantly to be present; and there were no holidays, and no play on any day. Wesley had learnt a sour German proverb, saying, "he that plays when he is a child, will play when he is a man " and he had forgotten an English one, proceeding from good nature and good sense, which tells us by what kind of discipline Jack may be made a dull boy : Why," he asks, "should he learn now what he must unlearn by and by?" Why?— for the same reason that he is fed with milk when a suckling, because it is food convenient for him. They were to work in fair weather, according to their strength, in the garden: on rainy days, in the house, always in presence of a master; for they were never, day or night, to be alone. This part of his system Wesley adopted from the great school at Jena, in Saxony; it is the practice of Catholic schools, and may perhaps, upon a comparison of evils, be better than the opposite extreme which leaves the boys, during the greater part of their time, wholly without superintendence. At a great expense of instinct and enjoyment, and of that freedom of character without which the best character can only obtain from us a cold esteem, it gets rid of much vice, much cruelty, and much unhappiness. The school hours were from seven to eleven, and from one to five eight was the hour for going to bed; they slept in one dormitory, each in a separate bed; a master lay in the same room, and a lamp was kept burning there. Their food was as simple as possible, and two days in the week, no meat was allowed. The things to be taught there make a formidable catalogue in the founder's plan; reading, writing, arithmetic; English, French, Latin, Greek, Hebrew; history, geography, chronology, rhetoric, logic, ethics; geometry, algebra; natural philosophy, and metaphysics. No Roman author was to be read who had lived later than the Augustan age, except certain selections from Juvenal, Persius, and Martial. This was carrying classical puritanism to an extreme; and it indicates no very sound judgment that Wesley should have preferred a few of the modern Latin writers to supply the place of those whom he rejected. The classics which were retained were to be carefully expurgated: there had been a time when he was for interdicting them altogether, as improper to be used in the education of Christian youth, but this folly he had long outgrown. He was enabled to establish the school by the bounty of Lady Maxwell, one of his few converts in high life. She was of the family of the Brisbanes, in Ayrshire; was married to Sir Walter Maxwell at the age of 17; at 19 was left a widow; and, six weeks after the death of her husband, lost her son and only child. From that hour she was never known to mention either. Weaned from the world by these severe dispensations, she looked for comfort to Him who giveth and who taketh away; and what little of her diary has appeared shows more of high enthusiastic devotion, unmingled and undebased, than is to be found in any other composition of the kind. She used to say, that, had it not been for the Methodists, she should never have had those enjoyments in religion to which she had attained; because it is seldom or never that we go further than our instructors teach us. It was, however, many years before she formally joined them, and she never forsook the church of Scotland. She lived to be the oldest member of the Society. The school was founded long before she became a member; but Wesley had no sooner mentioned his design to her, than she presented him with bank notes to the amount of 500l. and told him to begin immediately. After some time she asked how the building was going on, and whether he stood in need of further assistance; and hearing that a debt of 300l. had been incurred, though he desired that she would not consider herself under any obligation in the business, she immediately gave him the whole sum. The school was opened in 1748 in two or three months there were twenty-eight scholars, notwithstanding the strictness of the discipline; and so little was economy in education understood in those days, that there was an establishment of six masters for them. "From the very beginning," says Wesley, "I met with all sorts of discouragements. Cavillers, and prophets of evil, were on every side. An hundred objections were made, both to the whole design, and every particular branch of it, especially by those from whom I had reason to expect better things. Notwithstanding which, through God's help, I went on; wrote an English, a Latin, a Greek, a Hebrew, and a French grammar; and printed Prælectiones Pueriles, with many other books, for the use of the school." In making his grammars, Wesley rejected much of the rubbish with which such books are encumbered: they might have been simplified still further; but it was reserved for Dr. Bell, the friend of children, to establish the principle in education, that every lesson should be made perfectly intelligible to the child. Upon visiting the school a year after its establishment, he found that several rules had been habitually neglected; and he judged it necessary to send away some of the children, and suffer none to remain who were not clearly satisfied with them, and determined to observe them all. By the second year the scholars had been reduced from twenty-eight to eighteen it is marvellous indeed that any but the sons of the preachers should have remained; that any parents should have suffered their children to be bred up in a manner which would inevitably, in ninety-nine cases out of an hundred, either disgust them with religion, or make them hypocrites. "I wonder," says he, "how I am withheld from dropping the whole design, so many difficulties have continually attended it; yet if this : counsel is of God it shall stand, and all hinderances shall turn into blessings." The house was in a state of complete anarchy. One of the masters was so rough and disobliging, that the children were little profited by him a second, though honest and diligent, was rendered contemptible by his person and manner: the third had been useful, till the fourth set the boys against him; and the two others were weighed down by the rest, who neither observed the rules in the school nor out of it. To crown all, the housekeeper neglected her duty, being taken up with thoughts of another kind; and the four maids were divided into two parties. This pitiful case he published for the information of the Society, and cut down the establishment to two masters, a housekeeper, and a maid, Two of the elder boys were dismissed as incorrigible, out of four or five who were Co very uncommonly wicked," (a very uncommon proportion of wicked boys out of eighteen,) and five more soon went away. Still it went on badly four years afterwards he speaks of endeavouring once more to bring it into order. Surely," he says, "the importance of this design is apparent, even from the difficulties that attend it. I spent more money, and time, and care on this than almost any design I ever had; and still it exercises all the patience I have. But it is worth all the labour." : : 66 Provision had thus been made for the maintenance of the preachers' families, and the education of their sons. A Conference, to which Wesley, in the year 1744, invited his brother Charles, four other clergymen, who co-operated with him, and four of his lay preachers, was from that time held annually, and became the general assembly, in which the affairs of the Society were examined and determined. They began their first meeting by recording their desire, "that all things might be considered as in the immediate presence of God that they might meet with a single eye, and as little children who had every thing to learn; that every point which was proposed might be examined to the foundation; that every person might speak freely whatever was in his heart; and that every question which might arise should be thoroughly debated and settled." There was no reason, they said, to be afraid of doing this, lest they should overturn their first principles for if they were false, the sooner they were overturned the better; if they were true, they would bear the strictest examination. They determined, in the intermediate hours of this Conference, to visit none but the sick, and to spend all the time that remained in retirement; giving themselves to prayer for one another, and for a blessing upon this their labour. With regard to the judgment of the majority, they agreed that, in speculative things, each could only submit so far as his judgment should be convinced; and that, in every practical point, each would submit, so far as he could, without wounding his conscience. Further than this, they maintained, a Christian could not submit to any man or number of men upon earth; either to council, bishop, or convocation. And this was that grand principle of private judgment on which all the reformers proceeded. Every man must judge for himself; because every man must give an account for himself to God. But this principle, if followed to its full extent, is as unsafe and as untenable as the opposite extreme of the Romanists. The |