Susanna Wesley

232 SUSANNA WESLEY
City Road Burial Ground, and never was a more
suitable inscription placed on any tomb than when,
after her name and age, these words of the wise man
of Israel were cut on the stone : "She opened her
mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue was the law of
kindness/'
Mrs. Hall left her very small income, as well as her
papers and letters, to her beloved niece, who prized
them as the relics of one who had been to her a second
mother.
Most incidents in the lives of John and Charles
Wesley are so well known that it is needless to recapitulate
them here. It is, however, rather curious that
the family name has been transmitted only through
Charles and his youngest son Samuel. Mrs. Charles
Wesley was twenty-three at the time of her marriage,
and her husband forty-two.
They had nine children,
only three of whom lived to grow up ; and, as the
eldest son and the daughter lived and died single, all
the descendants are those of Samuel, several
of whose
children are still alive.
The maiden name of Mrs. C. Wesley was Sarah
Gwynne, and her parents lived at Garth in South
Wales. Her mother belonged to a very rich family,
being one of six sisters, each of whom had thirty
thousand pounds for her marriage portion. Beautiful
voices and musical talent were hereditary in the family,
so it was doubtless mainly through their mother that
the two sons, Charles and Samuel, derived the genius
for music that has made them famous. The union of
Charles and Sarah Wesley lasted thirty-nine years, when
he died at the age of eighty, and she survived him for
thirty-four years, being ninety-six when she departed.
Their eldest son Charles, born December llth, 1757,