Mrs. Hall ever vindicated her conduct; to her dying hour she testified the purity and approbation of her conscience in the whole business and it was the consciousness of having acted right in the sight of God in this matter, that enabled her to bear all his profligacy and unkind treatment with an even mind and unbroken spirit. And suppose that, on the principles which the detractors of this excellent and injured woman hold, he had been permitted to marry Kezzia, would he have been a better husband, or a better man? No. The seeds of all his profligacy were deeply radicated in him; and they would have produced their correspondent fruits, had he been married to an angel. He was a man of no mind: when even sincere, he acted not by Scripture or reason, but by impulse. He did not consult his judgment, for he had but little to consult; and had he been any where out of Paradise, he would have been a versatile, shatter-brained, and by turns, a pious and profligate man. Let his natural fickleness of character, and his imbecillity of mind, tell, as far as it may, in vindication of his conduct. He is gone to another world and his judgment is with God!

I rejoice that it has been in my power to withdraw the thick veil that has been spread over this woman's innocence. I can assure my Readers, that I have not advanced a single fact that is not founded on unexceptionable documents; and that I can produce both written and oral testimony to confirm the whole. The further anecdotes and facts which I shall shortly produce will serve still more particularly to illustrate the unimpeachable character of this woman, and to confirm the Reader in his conviction of her innocence.

As the circumstances above related, were little known to the Public, if at all, the marriage of Mr. Wesley Hall and Miss Patty Wesley became the subject of public congratulation.

I shall subjoin a copy of Verses printed in the Gentleman's Magazine for September 1735, p. 551, in which year Miss M. Wesley was married to Mr. W. Hall.

Each to each entire resigning,

One become by nuptial bands.

Happy union, which destroys
Half the ills of life below;
But the current of our joys
Makes with double vigour flow.
Sympathizing friends abate

The severer strokes of fate;
Happy hours, still happier prove
When they smile on those we love.

Joys to vulgar minds unknown

Shall their daily converse crown;

Easy slumbers, pure delights,

Bless their ever peaceful nights.

Oh Lucina, sacred power,

Here employ thy grateful care;
Smiling on the genial hour,

Give an offspring wise and fair!

That, when the zealous sire shall charm no more

Th' attentive audience with his sacred lore,
Those lips in silence closed, whose heavenly skill
Could raptures with persuasive words instil;

A son may in the important work engage,
And with his precepts mend the future age;
That when the accomplished mother, snatched by fate,
No more shall grace the matrimonial state;
No more exhibit in her virtuous life
The bright exemplar of a perfect wife;
A daughter, blest with each maternal grace,
May shine the pattern of the female race!

J. DUICK.

As to the father and his offspring these prayers were not answered: but the whole conduct of Mrs. Hall, during this unfortunate marriage, did prove her to be

"The bright exemplar of a perfect wife."

Mr. Hall passed from change to change, still in the deteriorating ratio; and from excess to excess in the ratio of geometrical progression, till he became a proverb of reproach and shame ;

The vilest husband, and the worst of men.

And on January 6, 1776, he died at Bristol, probably a penitent, exclaiming in his last hours, as Mrs. Hutchins testified, "I have injured an angel! an angel that never reproached me!"

Those who wish to see a full account of his delinquencies may consult the faithful Letter sent to him by Mr. John Wesley, December 22, 1747, in his Journals, Vol. II. p. 435.

Of his death Mr. Wesley speaks thus:

"I came (to Bristol) just time enough, not to see, but to bury, poor Mr. Hall, my brother-in-law, who died on Wednesday morning, January 6, 1776, I trust in peace; for God had given him deep repentance. Such another monument of Divine mercy, considering how low he had fallen, and from what heights of holiness, I have not seen, no not in seventy years. I had designed to have visited him in the morning: but he did not stay for my coming. It is enough, if after all his wanderings we meet again in Abraham's bosom." Journal, Vol. V. p. 177.

I need scarcely say, that Mr. Hall, who was a clergyman of the Church of England, and had a curacy at Salisbury, became a Moravian and Quietist, an Antinomian, a Deist, if not an Atheist, and a Polygamist, which last he defended in his teaching, and illustrated by his practice. He married Miss Patty Wesley in 1735, and died in 1776, being her husband for about forty years.

Having cleared Mrs. Hall's character and conduct in reference to her marriage, it may be necessary to consider her behaviour as a wife to one of the worst and most unkind of husbands. I will adduce one instance recorded by witnesses on the spot, and corroborated by herself, on being questioned as to its truth.

When they lived at Fullerton, near Salisbury, where they had a large house and garden, near the Church where he ministered, she he had taken a young woman into the house as a seamstress, whom Mr. Hall seduced; these were the beginning of his ways. Mrs. Hall, being quite unsuspicious, was utterly ignorant of any improper attachment between her husband and the girl.

Finding the time of the young woman's travail drawing near, he feigned a call to London on some important business, and departed. Soon after his departure, the woman fell in labour. Mrs. Hall, one of the most feeling and considerate of women on such occasions, ordered her servants to go instantly for a doctor. They all refused; and when she had remonstrated with them on their inhumanity, they completed her surprise by informing her that the girl, to whom they gave any thing but her own name, was in labour through her criminal connection with Mr. Hall, and that they all knew her guilt long before. She heard, without betraying any emotion, what she had not before even suspected, and repeated her commands for assistance. They, full of indignation at the unfortunate creature, and strangely inhuman, absolutely refused to obey; on which Mrs. Hall immediately went out herself, and brought in a midwife; called on a neighbour; divided the only six pounds she had in the house, and deposited five with her, who was astonished at her conduct; enjoined kind treatment, and no reproaches; and then set off for London, found her husband, related in her own mild manner the circumstances,

told him what she had done, and prevailed upon him to return to Salisbury as soon as the young woman could be removed from the house. He thought the conduct of his wife not only Christian, but heroic; and was for a time suitably affected by it: but having embraced the doctrine of Polygamy, his reformation was but of a short continuance. Mr. Hall was guilty of many similar infidelities; and after being the father of ten children by his wife, nine of whom lie buried at Salisbury, he abandoned his family, went off to Ireland with one of his mistresses, and his wife never saw him more. Notwithstanding all this treatment, Mrs. Hall was never heard to speak of him but with kindness. She often expressed wonder that women should profess to love their husbands and yet dwell upon their faults, or indeed upon those of their friends. She was never known to speak evil of any person.

Give me to feel another's woe.

To hide the faults I see,

was her maxim: exposure of vice she believed never did any good. "Tell your neighbour his fault, said she, between him and you alone: -when you censure, spare not the vice-but the name."

Her only remaining child, Wesley Hall, was a very promising youth; he lived till he was fourteen, and then died of the small-pox. He was educated at the expense of his uncles John and Charles. When his life was despaired of, his mother was sent for: but she came too late; the amiable youth had breathed his last before her arrival. Her tenderness as a mother was known to be so great, that they dreaded the effect this melancholy event might have on her mind when she came to the knowledge of it, especially as there had been a very reprehensible want of care in the family where he was boarded, which was supposed to have at least accelerated, if not caused, his death. But she bowed to this dispensation of Providence, which had deprived her of her last earthly hope and support: she bore the dreadful stroke with humility, meekness, and fortitude. No reflections on second causes,-no violence of grief,-no complaints of her bitter fate ;-all her conduct evinced the Christian, and the Christian parent.

Some have supposed that there must have been an apathy in her nature thus to bear the most grievous wrongs, and the heaviest losses: but such persons have not considered to what heights of excellence the human mind may be exalted by reason and religion.

When Mr. Charles Wesley asked her "How she could give money," as previously related, "to her husband's concubine ?” she answered, "I knew I could obtain what I wanted from many: but she, poor hapless creature! could not: many thinking it meritorious to abandon her to the distress which she had brought upon herself. Pity is due

to the wicked; the good claim esteem: besides, I did not act as a woman, but as a Christian.”

There are several still alive who can attest her sensibility: the poor, the sick, the afflicted of all descriptions, excited in her the deepest feelings of sympathy. Like her brother John, she was ready to bear the burthen of every sufferer; to deny herself the necessaries of life in order to relieve the needy; and to be stoical in no sufferings but her own.

This was the character of the Founder of Methodism; this was that of his excellent Sister. Her charity was unbounded; and the charity of a person reduced to an income so limited was "the munificence of the widow's mite, founded on self-denial." brother, Mr. Charles Wesley, has said, "It is in vain to give Pat any thing to add to her comforts; for she always gives it away to some person poorer than herself."

Another instance will farther illustrate this part of her character. In proportion as Mr. Hall advanced in profligacy, he lost all sense of decorum, and that shame which in all bad characters, not wholly abandoned to vice, usually accompanies the exposure of guilt. He had the frontless inhumanity one day to bring in one of his illegitimate infants; and he ordered his wife to take charge of it till he could provide it with a suitable situation. She ordered a cradle to be brought, placed the babe in it, and continued to perform for it all requisite acts of humanity.

While nursing this illegitimate, her only remaining child, Wesley Hall, of whom I have already spoken, had by some means displeased his father, who had now as little government of his temper as he had of his passions; for under a course of such transgressions a man usually becomes a sot or a fury. He rose up in a violent rage, thrust the child into a dark closet, and locked him up. The child was terrified to distraction. Mrs. Hall, with her usual calmness, desired him to release the child. He refused ;—she entreated, ➡he was resolute :-she asserted that the punishment was far beyond the fault; he still hesitated. She then summoned up the more than female dignity and courage which formed that part of her character that led her to decide on that line of conduct which she ought to pursue, from the evidence brought to her reason and conscience, and thus addressed him," Sir, thank the grace of God, that while my child is thus cruelly treated, suffering to distraction a punishment he has not merited, I had not turned your babe out of the cradle; but you must go and unlock the closet, and release the child or I will immediately do it." This tone was too decisive to be treated with either neglect or contempt. Mr. Hall arose, and unlocked the closet, and released the child. Even in this trifling case, her cool