"High births and virtue equally they scorn,
As asses dull, on dunghills born;
Impervious as the stones their heads are found,
Their rage and hatred steadfast as the ground."

(The lines were Hetty's.) When the Wesleys descended and walked among
these churls, it was as beings of another race; imperious in pride
and strength of will. They meant kindly. But the country-folk came
of an obstinate stock, fierce to resent what they could not
understand. Half a century before, a Dutchman, Cornelius Vermuyden
by name, had arrived and drained their country for them; in return
they had cursed him, fired his crops, and tried to drown out his
settlers and workmen by smashing the dams and laying the land under
water. Fierce as they were, these fenmen read in the Wesleys a will
to match their own and beat it; a scorn, too, which cowed, but at the
same time turned them sullen. Parson Wesley they frankly hated.
Thrice they had flooded his crops and twice burnt the roof over his
head.

If the six sisters were handsome, Hetty was glorious. Her hair,
something browner than auburn, put Emilia's in the shade; her brows,
darker even than dark Patty's, were broader and more nobly arched;
her transparent skin, her colour--she defied the sunrays carelessly,
and her cheeks drank them in as potable gold clarifying their blood--
made Nancy's seem but a dairymaid's complexion. Add that this
colouring kept an April freshness; add, too, her mother's height and
more than her mother's grace of movement, an outline virginally
severe yet flexuous as a palm-willow in April winds; and you have
Hetty Wesley at twenty-seven--a queen in a country frock and cobbled
shoes; a scholar, a lady, amongst hinds; above all, a woman made for