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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IX, Issue 174, 5 August 1874, Page 2

A writer in a Melbourne journal says: —l should like fo ask them what would become of Victoria if everyone retired from mining? What would be the condition of the colony if ita principal interest was virtually disestablished? Where would the farmer And a market for his produce, and the artificer for his manufactures? I had a friend who lived nt a goldGeids town. I often suggested that he should let me buy a few good thingß for him. " No, Atticus, my boy," was his invariable reply, " I don't believe in mining. A nice snug little freehold is my idea of an investment." He got bis freehold, and built a row of villas upou it. I saw the property the otber day; five of tbe houses are to let, and the owner lives in the sixth. The market value, of the house is rather less than the cost of the bricks. I wonder what my friend now thinks of freehold investments upon a mining town when tbe goldflelds in the vicinity are worked out? Moral: What will be the value of any property in Victoria, except for sheep-farming, if the goldflelds cease to be productive? John Wesley. —Macaulay sneers at historians who have undertaken to give an account of the reign of George 11. without .mentioning the preaching of Whitefield. If, instead of Whitefield, he had written Wesley, the sneer would have been more just; for the institution of Methodism is one of the greatest events of the eighteenth century, and of the men who lived in that century there i 3 no one whose influence upon after ages equals that of John Wesley. Of the seventy-five millions who speak tbe English tongue about three and a half millions are members of the Methodist church; four millions more are pupils in their Sunday schools, and the regular attendance upon Methodist worship cannot be less than as many more—fifteen millions in all. Thus one-fifth of all who speak our language are directly moulded, for this life and the life to come, by Methodism. We doubt if any other Protestant communion really numbers as many. Tbe Established Churches of England and Germany indeed nominally include more; but in counting their numbers all who do not formally belong to other communions are put down as Episcopalians or Lutherans. Fully two-thirds of tho Methodists are in the United States. To Methodism more than to any other one thing is it owing that our Western

States grew up into civilisation without pasemg through a period of semibarbarism. Sou they expressed no more thon the bare truth wheu he said, " I I conßider Wesley as the most influential mind of the last century— the man who will have produced the greatest effects centuries or perhaps millenniums hence, it the preseut race of men shall continue so long." This judgment is coming to be acknowledged. Within a few months past a site has been appropriated in Westminster Abbey for a monument to John Wesley. Of all the great Englishmen there commemorated thero ia none more worthy of a place. A Staunch Sabbatarian.— A distinguished professor was in Edinburgh one wet Sunday, and, desiring to go to Church, he hired a cab. On reaching the church door he tendered a shilling —the legal fare— to cabby, and was somewhat surprised to hear the cabman say, "Twa shullin', sir." The Professor fixing his eagle eyes upon the extortioner, demanded why he charged two shillings, upon which the cabman drily answered, « We wish to discourage travelling on the Sawbath as much as possible, sir."