aff 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