land and Scotland. In 1742 he visited Wales, which is still a stronghold of his followers. At Abergavenny he married a Welsh lady, a widow, who died in 1768. The marriage was unhappy.

At the age of forty-one Charles Wesley was married happily in Brecknockshire to Miss Sarah Gwynne. John married, about 1750, a widow with four children and a fortune, which he caused to be settled on herself. This lady plagued Wesley for twenty years with violent and causeless jealousy, and then abruptly left him. She lived ten years after the separation.

Between 1744 and 1748 Whitefield was again absent on a visit to America. He then became chaplain to Selina, Countess of Huntingdon. Before his return from a seventh visit to America, George Whitefield died, twenty years before John Wesley, of an asthmatic attack, at Boston, in 1770.

John Wesley died on the 2nd of March, 1791, in the sixty-fifth year of his ministry, and eightyeighth year of his age. During more than fifty years that he had spent in carrying his influence for good from place to place, he travelled about four thousand five hundred miles a year, chiefly on horseback. He had also for more than fifty years preached two, three, or four sermons a day, that is to say, more than forty thousand during his ministry; and he left behind him an organised religious society of 550 itinerant preachers and 140,000 members, in the United Kingdom and America.

1

Pope's "Essay on Man," Butler's "Analogy," and Wesley's preaching, all arose out of the reaction against stagnant religion, and the scepticism which had that for one of its sources. Wesley's success was due to the living power of an intense faith brought directly into contact with large masses of the people. His plea for lives that really worked out into actions the essential duties of a Christian had not only its hundred and forty thousand answers from men who understood and felt this direct way of bringing the Bible home to them, but among thousands of those who disapproved of Wesley's teaching, by the image of a living faith that he upheld with enthusiasm unabated during half a century of public work, religious life insensibly was quickened.

"The Ruins of Rome," by the Rev. John Dyer, whose "Grongar Hill" had been published in 1726, appeared about the time when Wesley began to preach, and three or four years after the "Essay on Man" and Butler's "Analogy." The date is 1740, and its quiet, religious spirit represents culture and taste thoughtfully spent upon reflection on the transitory glories of the world. John Dyer, who earlier in life had trained himself for a career in art, and visited Rome, sketched with his pencil what he better illustrated with his pen at a time when he He was about to enter the Church as a clergyman. began in 1740, at Calthorp, in Lincolnshire, with a living of £80 a year. For ten years he had no better income, and at his richest, Dyer received from two livings only £250 a year. The following lines contain the main thought of his poem

1 See "Shorter English Poems," pp. 368-70.

RUINS OF ROME.

From the Illustration in Dyer's Poems (1761).

RUINS OF ROME.

See the tall obelisks from Memphis old, One stone enormous each, or Thebes convey'd; Like Albion's spires they rush into the skies. And there the temple, where the summon'd state In deep of night conven'd: ev'n yet methinks The vehement orator in rent attire Persuasion pours, Ambition sinks her crest, And lo the villain, like a troubled sea That tosses up her mire! Ever disguis'd, Shall Treason walk? shall proud Oppression yoke The neck of Virtue? Lo the wretch, abashed, Self-betray'd Catiline!

O Liberty,

Parent of Happiness, celestial born;
When the first man became a living soul,
His sacred genius thou; be Britain's care;
With her, secure, prolong thy lov'd retreat;
Thence bless mankind; while yet among her sons,
Ev'n yet there are, to shield thine equal laws,
Whose bosom kindle at the sacred names
Of Cecil, Raleigh, Walsingham and Drake.
May others more delight in tuneful airs;
In masque and dance excel; to sculptur'd stone

2 Compare line 51 of "Grongar Hill:"

"Rushing from the woods, the spires Seem from hence ascending fires,"

Give with superior skill the living look;
More pompous piles erect, or pencil soft
With warmer touch the visionary board:
But thou, thy nobler Britons teach to rule;
To check the ravage of tyrannic sway;

To quell the proud; to spread the joys of peace,
And various blessings of ingenious trade.
Be these our arts; and ever may we guard,
Ever defend thee with undaunted heart.

Inestimable good! who giv'st us Truth,
Whose hand upleads to light, divinest Truth,
Array'd in ev'ry charm: whose hand benign
Teaches unwearied toil to clothe the fields,
And on his various fruits inscribes the name
Of Property: O nobly hailed of old
By thy majestic daughters, Judah fair,
And Tyrus and Sidonia, lovely nymphs,
And Libya bright, and all-enchanting Greece,
Whose num'rous towns and isles, and peopled seas,
Rejoiced around her lyre; th' heroic note
(Smit with sublime delight) Ausonia caught,
And planned imperial Rome. Thy hand benign
Reared up her tow'ry battlements in strength;
Bent her wide bridges o'er the swelling stream
Of Tuscan Tiber; thine those solemn domes
Devoted to the voice of humbler prayer;
And thine those piles undecked, capacious, vast,
In days of dearth where tender Charity
Dispensed her timely succours to the poor.
Thine too those musically-falling founts
To slake the clammy lip; adown they fall,
Musical ever; while from yon blue hills
Dim in the clouds, the radiant aqueducts
Turn their innumerable arches o'er
The spacious desert, brightening in the sun,
Proud and more proud in their august approach
High o'er irriguous vales and woods and towns,
Glide the soft whispering waters in the wind,
And here united pour their silver streams
Among the figured rocks, in murmuring falls,
Musical ever. These thy beauteous works:
And what beside felicity could tell

Of human benefit. More late the rest;
At various times their turrets chanced to rise,
When impious tyranny vouchsafed to smile.

Behold by Tiber's flood, where modern Rome Couches beneath the ruins: there of old With arms and trophies gleamed the field of Mars: There to their daily sports the noble youth Rushed emulous; to fling the pointed lance; To vault the steed; or with the kindling wheel In dusty whirlwinds sweep the trembling goal; Or wrestling, cope with adverse swelling breasts, Strong grappling arms, close heads and distant feet; Or clash the lifted gauntlets: there they formed Their ardent virtues: in the bossy piles, The proud triumphal arches, all their wars, Their conquests, honours, in the sculptures live. And see from ev'ry gate those ancient roads, With tombs high verged, the solemn paths of Fame: Deserve they not regard? O'er whose broad flints Such crowds have rolled, so many storms of war; So many pomps; so many wond'ring realms : Yet still thro' mountains pierc'd, o'er valleys rais'd, In even state to distant seas around

They stretch their pavements. Lo the fane of Peace,
Built by that prince, who to the trust of power
Was honest, the delight of human kind.
Three nodding aisles remain; the rest an heap
Of sand and weeds; her shrines, her radiant roofs,
And columns proud, that from her spacious floor,
As from a shining sea, majestic rose

An hundred foot aloft, like stately beech
Around the brim of Dion's glassy lake,
Charming the mimic painter: on the walls
Hung Salem's sacred spoils; the golden board,
And golden trumpets, now concealed, entombed
By the sunk roof.-O'er which in distant view
The Etruscan mountains swell, with ruins crowned
Of ancient towns; and blue Soracte spires,
Wrapping his sides in tempests. Eastward hence,
Nigh where the Cestian pyramid divides
The mould'ring wall, behold yon fabric huge,
Whose dust the solemn antiquarian turns,
And thence, in broken sculptures cast abroad,
Like Sybil's leaves, collects the builder's name
Rejoiced, and the green medals frequent found
Doom Caracalla to perpetual fame :

The stately pines, that spread their branches wide
In the dun ruins of its ample halls,

Appear but tufts; as may whate'er is high
Sink in comparison, minute and vile.

These, and unnumbered, yet their brows uplift, Rent of their graces; as Britannia's oaks

On Merlin's mount, or Snowdon's rugged sides,
Stand in the clouds, their branches scatter'd round,
After the tempest; Mausoleums, Cirques,
Naumachios, Forums; Trajan's column tall,
From whose low base the sculptures wind aloft,
And lead through various toils, up the rough steep,
Its hero to the skies; and his dark tower
Whose execrable hand the city fired,

And while the dreadful conflagration blazed,
Played to the flames; and Phoebus' lettered dome;
And the rough reliques of Carina's street,
Where now the shepherd to his nibbling sheep
Sits piping with his oaten reed; as erst
There piped the shepherd to his nibbling sheep,
When the humble roof Anchises' son explored
Of good Evander, wealth-despising king,
Amid the thickets. So revolves the scene;
So Time ordains, who rolls the things of pride
From dust again to dust. Behold that heap
Of mould'ring urns (their ashes blown away,
Dust of the mighty) the same story tell;
And at its base, from whence the serpent glides
Down the green desert street, yon hoary monk
Laments the same, the vision as he views,
The solitary, silent, solemn scene,
Where Cæsars, heroes, peasants, hermits lie,
Blended in dust together; where the slave
Rests from his labours; where the insulting proud
Resigns his power; the miser drops his hoard;
Where human folly sleeps.-There is a mood,
(I sing not to the vacant and the young)
There is a kindly mood of melancholy,
That wings the soul, and points her to the skies.
When tribulation clothes the child of man,
When age descends with sorrow to the grave,
"Tis sweetly soothing sympathy to pain,
A gently wakening call to health and ease.
How musical! when all-devouring Time,

land and Scotland. In 1742 he visited Wales, which is still a stronghold of his followers. At Abergavenny he married a Welsh lady, a widow, who died in 1768. The marriage was unhappy.

At the age of forty-one Charles Wesley was married happily in Brecknockshire to Miss Sarah Gwynne. John married, about 1750, a widow with four children and a fortune, which he caused to be settled on herself. This lady plagued Wesley for twenty years with violent and causeless jealousy, and then abruptly left him. She lived ten years after the separation.

Between 1744 and 1748 Whitefield was again absent on a visit to America. He then became chaplain to Selina, Countess of Huntingdon. Before his return from a seventh visit to America, George Whitefield died, twenty years before John Wesley. of an asthmatic attack, at Boston, in 1770.

John Wesley died on the 2nd of March, 1" in the sixty-fifth year of his ministry, and eighth year of his age. During more than fif that he had spent in carrying his influen from place to place, he travelled about f five hundred miles a year, chiefly on had also for more than fifty yea three, or four sermons a day, th than forty thousand during his behind him an organised r itinerant preachers and J United Kingdom and APope's "Essay on M

storer, balmy sleep!

eady visit pays

the wretched he forsakes:

inion flies from woe,

nsullied with a tear.

sual) and disturbed repose,

py they who wake no more!

in, if dreams infest the grave.

ag from a sea of dreams

where my wrecked desponding thought to wave of fancied misery

dom drove, her helm of reason lost:
Though now restored, 'tis only change of pain,
(A bitter change!) severer for severe :
The day too short, for my distress! and Night,
Even in the zenith of her dark domain,
Is sunshine to the colour of my fate.

Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne,
In rayless majesty, now stretches forth
Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumb'ring world:
Silence, how dead! and darkness, how profound!
Nor eye, nor listening ear an object finds:
Creation sleeps. 'Tis as the general pulse
Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause;
An awful pause! prophetic of her end.
And let her prophecy be soon fulfilled;
Fate! drop the curtain; I can lose no more.

Silence and darkness! solemn sisters! twins
From ancient night, who nurse the tender thought
To reason, and on reason build resolve
(That column of true majesty in man),
Assist me: I will thank you in the grave;

The grave, your kingdom: there this frame shall fall
A victim sacred to your dreary shrine.

But what are ye?-Thou, who didst put to flight
Primæval silence, when the morning stars
Exulted, shouted o'er the rising ball;

O Thou whose Word from solid darkness struck
That spark, the sun; strike wisdom from my soul;
My soul which flies to Thee, her trust, her treasure,
As misers to their gold, while others rest.

Through this opaque of nature, and of soul,
This double night, transmit one pitying ray,
To lighten and to cheer. O lead my mind
(A mind that fain would wander from its woe),
Lead it through various scenes of life and death;
And from each scene the noblest truths inspire.
Nor less inspire my conduct than my song;
Teach my best reason, reason; my best will,
Teach rectitude; and fix my firm resolve
Wisdom to wed, and pay her long arrear.
Nor let the vial of thy vengeance, poured
On this devoted head, be poured in vain.

The bell strikes one. We take no note of time,
But from its loss. To give it then a tongue,
Is wise in man. As if an angel spoke,

cible at myself,

lost! at home a stranger,

wanders up and down, surprised, aghast,
u wond'ring at her own: how reason reels!
O what a miracle to man is man,

Triumphantly distressed! what joy, what dread!
Alternately transported, and alarmed!

What can preserve my life? or what destroy?
An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave:
Legions of angels can't confine me there.

"Tis past conjecture; all things rise in proof:
While o'er my limbs sleep's soft dominion spread,
What though my Soul fantastic measures trod
O'er fairy fields! or mourned along the gloom
Of pathless woods; or, down the craggy steep
Hurled headlong, swam with pain the mantled pool;
Or scaled the cliff; or danced on hollow winds,
With antic shapes, wild natives of the brain?
Her ceaseless flight, though devious, speaks her nature
Of subtler essence than the trodden clod:
Active, aerial, towering, unconfined,
Unfettered with her gross companion's fall.
Ev'n silent night proclaims my soul immortal:
Ev'n silent night proclaims eternal day:
For human weal Heaven husbands all events;
Dull sleep instructs, nor sport vain dreams in vain.
Why then their loss deplore that are not lost?
Why wanders wretched thought their tombs around,
In infidel distress? Are angels there?
Slumbers, raked up in dust, ethereal fire?
They live! they greatly live a life on earth
Unkindled, unconceived; and from an eye
Of tenderness, let heavenly pity fall

On me, more justly numbered with the dead.
This is the desert, this the solitude:
How populous, how vital, is the grave!
This is creation's melancholy vault,
The vale funereal, the sad cypress gloom;
The land of apparitions, empty shades!

All, all on earth is shadow, all beyond

Is substance. The reverse is folly's creed:

How solid all, where change shall be no more!

All through our lives we look towards a future :

All promise is poor dilatory man,

And that through every stage; when young, indeed,
In full content, we sometimes nobly rest,
Unanxious for ourselves: and only wish,

As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise.

At thirty man suspects himself a fool;
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan:

At fifty chides his infamous delay,
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve;
In all the magnanimity of thought
Resolves; and re-resolves: then dies the same.

And why? because he thinks himself immortal:
All men think all men mortal but themselves;
Themselves, when some alarming shock of fate
Strikes through their wounded hearts the sudden dread;
But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air,
Soon close; where passed the shaft no trace is found:
As from the wing no scar the sky retains;
The parted wave no furrow from the keel;
So dies in human hearts the thought of death:
Even with the tender tear which nature sheds
O'er those we love, we drop it in their grave.
Can I forget Philander? That were strange;
O my full heart!—But should I give it vent,
The longest night, though longer far, would fail,
And the lark listen to my midnight song.

Memory of Philander animates the thoughts of Night the Second, on Time, Death, and Friendship. Night the Third dwells on Narcissa's memory. subject of the Fourth Night is the Christian Triumph over Death :

:

Oh, ye cold-hearted, frozen formalists! On such a theme 'tis impious to be calm; Passion is reason, transport temper, here!

The

Shall Heaven, which gave us ardour, and has shown
Her own for man so strongly, not disdain
What smooth emollients in theology
Recumbent virtue's downy doctors preach,
That prose
of piety, a lukewarm phrase?
Rise odours sweet from incense uninflamed?
Devotion, when lukewarm, is undevout;
But when it glows, its heat is struck to heaven,
To human hearts her golden harps are strung;
High heaven's orchestra chaunts Amen to man.
The theme of the Fifth Night is the Relapse into
grief:-

"Tis vain to seek in men for more than man.
Though proud in promise, big in previous thought,
Experience damps our triumph. I, who late,
Emerging from the shadows of the grave,
Where grief detained me prisoner, mounting high
Threw wide the gates of everlasting day,
And called mankind to glory, shook off pain,
Mortality shook off, in ether pure,

And struck the stars: now feel my spirits fail;
They drop me from the zenith; down I rush,
Like him whom fable fledged with flaxen wings,
In sorrow drowned-but not in sorrow lost.
How wretched is the man who never mourned!
I dive for precious pearl in sorrow's stream:
Not so the thoughtless man that only grieves;
Takes all the torment and rejects the gain,
(Inestimable gain!) and gives Heaven leave
To make him but more wretched, not more wise.

Here sitting on his throne of ruins hoar,

While winds and tempests sweep his various lyre,
How sweet thy diapason, Melancholy!
Cool evening comes; the setting sun displays
His visible great round between yon towers,
As through two shady cliffs; away, my Muse,
Though yet the prospect pleases, ever new
In vast variety, and yet delight

The many-figured sculptures of the path
Half beauteous, half effaced. The traveller
Such antique marbles to his native land
Oft hence conveys; and every realm and state
With Rome's august remains, heroes and gods,
Deck their long galleries and winding groves;
Yet miss we not th' innumerable thefts,
Yet still profuse of graces teems the waste.

Suffice it now th' Esquilian mount to reach
With weary wing, and seek the sacred rests
Of Maro's humble tenement; a low

Plain wall remains; a little sun-gilt heap,
Grotesque and wild; the gourd and olive brown
Weave the light roof: the gourd and olive fan
Their am'rous foliage, mingling with the vine,
Who drops her purple clusters through the green.
Here let him lie, with pleasing fancy soothed:
Here flowed his fountain; here his laurels grew;
Here oft the meek good man, the lofty bard,
Framed the celestial song, or social walked
With Horace and the ruler of the world.
Happy Augustus! who so well inspired
Could'st throw thy pomps and royalties aside,
Attentive to the wise, the great of soul,
And dignify thy mind. Thrice glorious days,
Auspicious to the Muses! Then revered,
Then hallow'd was the fount, or secret shade,
Or open mountain, or whatever scene
The poet chose to tune the ennobling rime
Melodious; e'en the rugged sons of war,
E'en the rude hinds revered the poet's name:
But now-another age, alas! is ours.
Yet will the Muse a little longer soar,

Unless the clouds of care weigh down her wing,
Since nature's stores are shut with cruel hand,
And each aggrieves his brother; since in vain
The thirsty pilgrim at the fountains asks
The o'erflowing wave. Enough-the plaint disdain.

Dr. Edward Young, who took orders in 1727, and became chaplain to George II., was presented by his college, in 1730, to the rectory of Welwyn, Herts, and married, in 1731, Lady Elizabeth Lee, the daughter of the Earl of Lichfield, and widow of Colonel Lee. Young's wife had, by her former marriage, a daughter, who was married, in 1735, to Mr. Temple, son of Lord Palmerston. She died at Lyons, of consumption, when on the way to Nice for warmer climate, in the following year, 1736. Young was with her at the time; as he says in the " Night Thoughts:"

"I flew, I snatched her from the rigid north, And bore her nearer to the sun."

This step-daughter is the Narcissa of the third book of Young's "Night Thoughts." The Philander

of the poem is her husband, Mr. Temple, to whom Dr. Young was warmly attached, and who, after marrying again, died in 1740. The poet's wife, Lady Elizabeth, followed in 1741, and these three deaths were the occasion of the "Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality." Of the nine books, eight are headed "The Complaint," and the ninth is "The Consolation." Thus the whole poem opens :

NIGHT THOUGHTS.

Tired nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep!
He, like the world, his ready visit pays
Where fortune smiles; the wretched he forsakes:
Swift on his downy pinion flies from woe,
And lights on lids unsullied with a tear.

From short (as usual) and disturbed repose,

I wake: how happy they who wake no more!
Yet that were vain, if dreams infest the grave.

I wake, emerging from a sea of dreams
Tumultuous; where my wrecked desponding thought
From wave to wave of fancied misery

At random drove, her helm of reason lost:
Though now restored, 'tis only change of pain,
(A bitter change!) severer for severe :

The day too short, for my distress! and Night,
Even in the zenith of her dark domain,
Is sunshine to the colour of my fate.

Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne,
In rayless majesty, now stretches forth
Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumb'ring world:
Silence, how dead! and darkness, how profound!
Nor eye, nor listening car an object finds:
Creation sleeps. 'Tis as the general pulse
Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause;
An awful pause! prophetic of her end.
And let her prophecy be soon fulfilled;
Fate! drop the curtain; I can lose no more.

Silence and darkness! solemn sisters! twins
From ancient night, who nurse the tender thought
To reason, and on reason build resolve
(That column of true majesty in man),

Assist me: I will thank you in the grave;

The grave, your kingdom: there this frame shall fall
A victim sacred to your dreary shrine.

But what are ye ?-Thou, who didst put to flight
Primæval silence, when the morning stars
Exulted, shouted o'er the rising ball;

O Thou whose Word from solid darkness struck
That spark, the sun; strike wisdom from my soul;
My soul which flies to Thee, her trust, her treasure,
As misers to their gold, while others rest.

Through this opaque of nature, and of soul,
This double night, transmit one pitying ray,
To lighten and to cheer. O lead my mind
(A mind that fain would wander from its woe),
Lead it through various scenes of life and death;
And from each scene the noblest truths inspire.
Nor less inspire my conduct than my song;
Teach my best reason, reason; my best will,
Teach rectitude; and fix my firm resolve
Wisdom to wed, and pay her long arrear.
Nor let the vial of thy vengeance, poured
On this devoted head, be poured in vain.

The bell strikes one. We take no note of time,
But from its loss. To give it then a tongue,
Is wise in man. As if an angel spoke,