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family, and never changed his political opinions, as may be seen by a glance at his collected poems, which were reprinted as lately as 1862.

The last words Mrs. Wesley is known to have written on the supernatural were in 1719, in answer to a letter from John Wesley, who gave extraordinary credence to stories of ghosts and apparitions; he was then at Oxford, where he was interested in a haunted house in the neighbourhood. The special subject of his epistle was to describe how a Mr. Barnesley and two other undergraduates had recently met a wraith in the fields, and afterwards ascertained that Barnesley's mother had died in Ireland at the very moment of the spectre's appearance. Mrs. Wesley's reply was. temperate, and even guarded:

"DEAR JACKY,

"The story of Mr. Barnesley has afforded me many curious speculations. I do not doubt the fact; but I cannot understand why these apparitions are permitted. If they were allowed to speak to us, and we had strength to bear such converse-if they had commission to inform us of anything relating to their invisible world that would be of any use to us in this -if they would instruct us how to avoid danger, or put us in a way of being wiser and better, there would be sense in it; but to appear for no end that we know of, unless to frighten people almost out of their wits, seems altogether unreasonable.

"S. WESLEY."

It was a very curious circumstance that about a hundred years after the Wesleys had ceased to have

any connection with Epworth, strange noises were heard in the Rectory; and the then incumbent, not being able to trace or account for them, went away with his family and resided abroad for some time.

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CHAPTER XII.

DISAPPOINTMENTS AND PERPLEXITIES.

MRS. WESLEY, it will be remembered, had a brother, Samuel Annesley, who went to India, which, in those days, was regarded almost as live-long banishment. He left a wife and perhaps young children behind him, who seem to have resided at Shore House, Hackney, a fine old red brick residence which was in the fields when Jane Shore lived there, and was approached by her royal lover by a footpath from the main road, known for many generations as King Edward's Path, but now widened and built over, and called King Edward's Road. Shore House is well remembered by numbers of people still living, but it has shared the fate of so many similar edifices, and been pulled down, the old bricks being used in the erection of small villas built over what was once a fertile and wellstocked garden, and forming a short thoroughfare called Shore Road. Samuel Annesley must have been in fairly prosperous circumstances to have established his family at Shore House, and it is nearly certain that after the fire at Epworth Rectory one or two of his nieces stayed with them for a time, and produced

a favourable impression. In going out to India Mr. Annesley hoped to amass a fortune, and is supposed to have done so, though at the time he was expected to return to England he was lost sight of, and no intelligence of his fate, nor any of the money he had obtained, ever reached his relatives. About 1712-13 he wrote to Mr. Wesley, requesting that he would act as his agent in England with the East India Company; and after some hesitation Mr. Wesley accepted the post, hoping, with the assistance of his son at Westminster, to be able to do so satisfactorily. He was not, however, a man of business, and as soon as his brother-in-law discovered this, he transferred the agency to someone else. Mr. Annesley not unnaturally wrote to his sister, complaining of her husband's short-lived administration of his affairs, and she as naturally showed a wifely spirit in defending him. Letters in those days took a great while to go and come, and a long and interesting letter from Mrs. Wesley to her brother, was written on her birthday, and gives us one of the few glimpses we have at the then condition of her family :—

"SIR,

"Epworth, Jan. 20th, 1721-2. "The unhappy differences between you and Mr. Wesley have prevented my writing for some years, not knowing whether a letter from me would be acceptable, and being unwilling to be troublesome. But feeling life ebb apace, and having a desire to be at peace with all men, especially you, before my exit, I have ventured to send one letter more, hoping you will give yourself the trouble to read it without prejudice.

"I am, I believe, got on the right side of fifty,

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infirm and weak; yet, old as I am, since I have taken my husband 'for better or for worse,' I'll take my residence with him, where he lives will I live, and where he dies will I die, and there will I be buried. God do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part him and me.' Confinement is nothing to one that by sickness is compelled to spend great part of her time in a chamber; and I sometimes think that if it were not on account of Mr. Wesley and the children, it would be perfectly indifferent to my soul whether she ascended to the supreme Origin of being from a jail or a palace, for God is everywhere :

No walls, nor locks, nor bars, nor deepest shade,
Nor closest solitude excludes His presence;
And in what place soever He vouchsafes
To manifest His presence, there is heaven.

And that man whose heart is penetrated with Divine love, and enjoys the manifestations of God's blissful presence is happy, let his outward condition be what it will. He is rich, as having nothing, yet possessing all things. This world, this present state of things, is but for a time. What is now future will be present, as what is already past once was; and then, as Mr. Pascal observes, a little earth thrown on our cold head will for ever determine our hopes and our condition; nor will it signify much who personated the prince or the beggar, since, with respect to the exterior, all must stand on the same level after death.

"Upon the best observation I could ever make, I am induced to believe that it is much easier to be contented without riches than with them. It is so natural for a rich person to make his gold his god (for whatever a person loves most, that thing, be it what it will, he will certainly make his god); it is

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