The duke was amongst the first to advance, and spoke joyously to the men as he rode along.  The bullets were whistling around him, and one of his staff ventured to point out to him the terrible danger he was running.  “Never mind,” said the duke, “let them fire away:  the battle’s won, and my life is of no consequence now.”

About 15,000 men out of Wellington’s army were killed or wounded on the day of this great battle.  But Europe was saved.

The duke, who appeared so calm and unmoved in battle, thus wrote just afterwards, when the excitement of the conflict was over:  “My heart is broken at the terrible loss I have sustained in my old friends and companions and my poor soldiers.  Believe me, nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.”

A PRINCE OF PREACHERS.

THE STORY OF JOHN WESLEY.

“I do intend to be more particularly careful of the soul of this child that Thou hast so mercifully provided for than ever I have been, that I may do my endeavour to instil into his mind the principles of Thy true religion and virtue.  Lord, give me grace to do it sincerely and prudently, and bless my attempts with good success!”

Thus wrote Susanna Wesley of her son John.  The child had been nearly burned to death when he was about six years old in a fire that broke out at the Rectory of Epworth, where John and Charles Wesley and a large family were born.

Mrs. Wesley devoted herself to the training of her children, taught them to cry softly even when they were a year old, and conquered their wills even earlier than that.  Her one great object was so to prepare her little ones for the journey of life that they might be God’s children both in this world and the next.  To that end she devoted all her endeavours.

Is it wonderful that, with her example before their eyes and her fervent prayers to help them, the Wesleys made a mark upon the world?

John Wesley—­“the brand plucked out of the burning,” as he termed himself—­when a boy was remarkable for his piety.  At eight his father admitted him to the Holy Communion.  He had thus early learned the lesson of self-control; for his mother tells us that having smallpox at this age he bore his disease bravely, “like a man and indeed like a Christian, without any complaint, though he seemed angry at the smallpox when they were sore, as we guessed by his looking sourly at them”.

At the age of ten John Wesley went to Charterhouse School.  For a long time after he got there he had little to live on but dry bread, as the elder boys had a habit of taking the little boys’ meat; but so far from this hurting him he said, in after life, that he thought it was good for his health!

Although he was not at school remarkable for the piety he had shown earlier, yet he never gave up reading his Bible daily and saying his prayers morning and evening.