d have made a readable story out of such
materials; but to make a history worthy of the name required the hand of
a master.

There is something, perhaps, rather fanciful in the coincidence or
parallel which the author would make out between the enterprise of John
Wesley and that of James Watt. Yet it is not devoid of interest. While
the one, toiling in poverty and obscurity, was preparing an invention
which should incalculably multiply industrial productiveness and give a
mightier impulse to modern civilization than any other material element,
the other, incurring the opprobrium of his ecclesiastical order, and
regarded as a reprehensible agitator and fanatic, was inaugurating a
movement which should prove one of the most extraordinary and
far-reaching of any in modern times; and both these agencies--the one
employing a mighty material force in the interest of society, the other
setting in operation vast moral energies for the uplifting of the
masses--were to have their grandest results in the New World.

Dr. Stevens is especially happy in his sketches of character; only,
possibly, in indulging too much his inclination for this sort of
writing, he repeats himself, and in the recurrence of pet phrases
wearies the reader. Yet some of these are very good. The description of
Francis Asburey, the "Pioneer Bishop," is one not often excelled. He was
one of the early missionaries sent over by Wesley, and became the great
leader in the work and the principal organizer of the ecclesiastical
machinery. He was the first bishop ordained in the country,--and a very
unique and remarkable bishop he was. There was for him no splendid
palace, no magnificent cathedral, no princely income. His salary was
sixty-four dollars a year, his diocese a whole continent, to visit which
he must find his way without roads, through almost illimitable woods,
over nearly inaccessible mountains, floundering through swamps, wading
or swimming vast rivers, scorched by hot suns, bitten by winter frosts,
drenched with pitiless rains, smothered by driving snows, and often in
divers dangers of death. His travelling equipage was not a chariot and
four, but saddlebags and one. Often sick and suffering, he seldom
allowed himself to be detained from his appointments. He went wherever
he sent his preachers, and shared with them all the toils and privations
incident to the work. He annually made the tour of the States,
travelling never less than five thousand, and o