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Untitled Article
to me and my wife She Joyns With me In Love to your Selfe and Bro : Charles 4 From Your Loveing Bro : to Comnd—* Wm . Wright . ' PS . I ve sen . you Sum Verses that my wife maid of Dear Lamb Let me hear from one or both of you as Soon as you Think Conveniant . ' * p . 244—246 .
It seems that Mehetabel made a vain effort to inspire something like feeling into the animal to which she was bound . The experiment only added to the disappointments which she was doomed to endure . His nature was capable of little above mere animal appetite . Children might have become something to her . But they all died very young . His occupation was that of a plumber , and , as she believed , the white-lead killed them all . ' The
touching lines just quoted breathe a sentiment which became habitual to her . She lived in the hope of death . After the loss of her sister Mary , there seems not to have been a human being in sympathy with her , or by whom she was properly appreciated . Devout she was , but it was the devotion of a martyr , whose sufferings were too great for her strength ; her spirits sunk , and her
beauty withered ; at least , so her biographers say ; but the eye was unquenched , and the face would have beamed in happiness . There was a prudent man , one Mr . Duncombe , who saw her towards the close of her life , and who writes to the celebrated Elizabeth Carter , * It affected me to view the ruin of so fine a frame ; so I made her only three or four visits . ' This same sage remarks , of her calling her brother , John Wesley , the King of the Methodists , that it looked like a piece of lunacy ; ' not much we
think . He probably thought the same of another expression which he reports , and which combines a delicate irony with deep grief . ' She told me that she had long ardently wished for death , and the rather , ' said she , c because we , the Methodists , always die in transports of joy . She died as she had lived , more gracefully than beseems a Methodist . Her brother Charles preached a funeral sermon from a text which appropriately declares , ' the days of thy mourning shall be ended . '
Mehetabei Wesley was the victim , as woman is yet continually the victim , of bad education , perverted religion , and unequal institution . The finer the individual nature , the more costly is the sacrifice . The feeling , taste , mental power , and moral purity , which some of her poems , and many passages of her life indicate , are such as to prove her capability , in favourable circumstances ,
of ministering most largely to social improvement and enjoyment , and , at the same time , to individual happiness , and of having both blessings amply measured back into her own bosom . And all this was wasted upon one for whom a comely scullion , with not a thought above her avocation , would have been as satisfactory a companion , probably much more so , and would
Untitled Article
176 A Victim .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1833, page 176, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2610/page/32/
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