ordinarily wear either shoes or sandals. In their sculptures and paintings very few figures occur with sandaled feet; and as we may presume, that in the course of two hundred and fifteen years the Israelites had adopted this and other customs of the Egyptians, we may understand that (except by the Priests) sandals were only used during journeys, which would render their eating the passover with sandaled feet a still stronger mark of preparation than even the previous alternative.—Knight's Illustrated Commentary.

WESLEYAN CHRONOLOGICAL NOTICES.
No. XI.

1743. ABOUT this period, William Darney, a native of Scotland, assisted by Jonathan Maskew and Paul Greenwood, (then known as "Mr. Grimshaw's men," and who subsequently entered the itinerancy,) is instrumental in raising up several societies in Todmorden and the neighbourhood, which for some time are designated, "William Darney's societies." Sunday, May 29th. Mr. Wesley commences his ministrations at the chapel in West-street, London, near the Seven Dials; a building originally erected by French Protestant emigrants, but which, by a "strange chain of providences,” had fallen into his hands.

June 16th. Mr. Charles Wesley, after having spent some time in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, preaching frequently, and instituting a searching inquiry as to the state of the society there, preaches at Sunderland to "about a thousand wild people;" and on the following day addresses a huge multitude at South-Shields, where a mob, "with the Minister at their head," give much molestation.

Friday, June 24th. The Messrs. Wesley address large numbers in the market-place at Nottingham; after which a society of nine persons is formed.

Sunday, June 26th. The first society in Birmingham formed by Mr. Charles Wesley. After recording his preaching at eight in the morning, and again to several thousands in the evening, he observes, "In the name of the Lord Jesus I began our society: the number at present is thirteen."

1743. August 12th. Mr. Charles Wesley, after a residence of several weeks in Cornwall, where, in the midst of much opposition from persecuting Clergymen and riotous mobs, he had successfully preached the Gospel of Christ, reaches London, for the purpose of attending a Conference which his brother had summoned of the leading men amongst the Moravians, the Calvinistic and the Arminian Methodists; the three communities then exerting themselves to effect a revival of evangelical religion. The attempt, however, proves abortive.

August 30th. Mr. Wesley for the first time visits Cornwall. Speaking severally to the society at St. Ives, then amounting to about one hundred and twenty, he finds that near one hundred had found peace with God. In various parts of the county, the seed of the word, then and previously sown, soon produced an abundant harvest.

Thursday, October 20th. Mr. Wesley visiting Wednesbury is almost miraculously preserved from the attacks of a brutal and outrageous mob; within a few days of which, a warrant is issued for the apprehension of "disorderly persons, styling themselves Methodist Preachers, who go about raising routs and riots, to the great damage of His Majesty's liege people."

October. Mr. Eggington, the Clergyman of Wednesbury, dies "almost immediately after the destructive riots of which he had been the principal cause."

Towards the close of this year Mr. Wesley appoints visiters of the sick, as a distinct class of officers in his society. These are enjoined to visit each sick person in their respective districts thrice a week; to administer religious instruction; to relieve them, if in want; to procure, when requisite, medical advice; and, as far as circumstances would allow, personally to contribute to their comfort and welfare.

1744. February 18th. The riotous proceedings against the Methodists in Wednesbury and elsewhere, which, so far from being discountenanced, were actually encouraged, if not directed, by the Clergy and Magistracy of the day, are thus reported in the "Whitehall and London Evening Post" of the above date:-"By a private letter from Staffordshire, we

have advice of an insurrection of the people called Methodists; who, upon some pretended insults from the Church party, have assembled themselves in a riotous manner, and, having committed several outrages, proceeded at last to burn the house of one of their adversaries." Such was the representation of scenes in which hundreds of unoffending members of the Wesleyan societies, "without burning any house, or making any resistance, had their own houses broken up, their windows, window-cases, beds, tools, goods of all sorts, broke all to pieces, or taken away by open violence; their live goods driven off, themselves forced to fly for their lives, and most of them stripped of all they had in the world.”

1744. In the unsettled state of the nation at this period, the country being at war with France and Spain, and threatened also with foreign invasion, the Wesleys, though stigmatized as Papists and adherents of the Pretender, strenuously inculcate loyalty wherever they preach; and in the principal societies under their care, institute "weekly meetings of intercession with God for the maintenance of public tranquillity, and of the Protestant constitution."

P.

SENSATION AND THE SENSES.
No. VI.

WE now come (if where all is important, all is wonderful, any comparison may be instituted) to that sense which perhaps may be considered as most important and most wonderful; to that which is the widest in its range, and comprehends the greatest number and variety of objects; that is, the sense of sight.

We have hitherto avoided not only all the more difficult physical details connected with each particular sense, but also all metaphysical speculations. Our object has been to put the young reader in possession of a series of most astonishing facts; and in doing this, we have all along assumed two facts: the one, that it is the immaterial mind which, in some way, receives the fact communicated through the medium of sensation; the other, that there do really exist objects besides the perceiving individual, and exterior to him. Into the

metaphysical arguments proving what we have thus assumed we shall not at all enter. We only say that if these are not facts, the word is without meaning in the human vocabulary. We have the same evidence for their existence that we have of our own; and he who truly and consistently doubts concerning them, must, if he carry out his principle, doubt concerning everything; must doubt whether he doubts or not, whether he exists or not. Actual consciousness is an ultimate fact which must be assumed as the basis of all our speculations; and if we doubt whether it is sufficient to prove that other things exist, we must doubt its sufficiency to prove that existence is possessed by ourselves. We again say, therefore, that into such metaphysical inquiries we shall not enter; but shall conclude, as we began, with assuming that the two great facts we have just mentioned are really and truly such.

But, assuming these facts, as well as that the reader knows to what sense we are now referring, we will state why we have introduced the particular sense of sight in the manner which he will already have noticed. In this, as in all the other cases, nerves are the instruments; and, so far as we have any opportunity of judging, the nerves are all alike. Yet let us mark the differences in, if not their operations, yet their results. In feeling, we are conscious that we touch something, or that something touches us; that it is hard, soft, hot, cold, rough, smooth, as the case may be. And we are conscious of the very sensation. In tasting, and smelling, we know that the sensation is caused; but it is the sensation itself of which we are conscious, without referring so much to the perception of the cause, even as in touch. In hearing, it is rather to the cause of the sensation that the perceiving faculty adverts. We feel the taste on our tongue and palate. We smell at a rose: we happen to know that the rose gives forth what we call the odour. Still, we are conscious of the peculiar sensation in our nostrils. But though we know we hear by our ears, we do not perceive the sound in our ears in the same way that we are conscious of flavours and odours. Whatever is the case with the infant, the perceiving faculty very early judges that there is distance, and that sound, coming from a distance, comes, also, in a certain direction.

We learn these things before we are taught them by others; before we are at all conscious of the mental process which establishes the conclusion. Somehow, the sensation suggests, or conveys to the perceiving faculty, the notions, or ideas, (call them by what name you will, we are only pointing out the fact,) of direction, of distance, of externality.

But this is the case most especially with the sense of seeing. Of all the senses, the mind seems in this to have least to do with the sensation, and most with the external cause. We none of us can recollect how it was in infancy. Long before voluntary reasoning began, the perceiving faculty had perfectly received the fact of externality by the sensation; and when once introduced, it was not to be dislodged. A case, indeed, is recorded of a young man, blind from his earliest infancy, who received his sight by a surgical operation, and who is thought at first to have supposed that the objects which he saw touched his eye. He rather appears to have been confused as to distance than externality. Wishing to identify a favourite cat in his old way, (by feeling,) he caught her; a task he would have had some difficulty in accomplishing if he had lifted his hand to his eyes. But so it is ordained and provided, that either the sensation, or the external object, shall be most adverted to, as may be most necessary for the attainment of the grand result,—the developement of the faculties of man, through the medium of intercourse with existences exterior to himself.

For the sensation of sight, (or, to use a word for the act of seeing, for vision,) three things must be considered, in the act so intermingled that scarcely one can be described without referring to another. The organ, which in this case, as well as in hearing, is double; the medium; and the object considered as visible.

Perhaps the medium, or light, may be advantageously considered first. We cannot see without light; with less light we see less perfectly; with full light we see most perfectly. But what light is, who can tell? As the medium of vision we have a general notion of it; and by careful observation some of its most important laws have been ascertained. But whether it is a fluid perpetually streaming from some source, or the undula