In 1762 he is able to record of Cornwall:
“The detestable practice of cheating the King (smuggling) is no more found in our societies, and since the accursed thing has been put away, the work of God has everywhere increased.”
The Cornish practice of “wrecking” still continued and in 1776 Wesley writes, “I was afterwards inquiring if that scandal in Cornwall of plundering wrecked vessels still continued.” He was told that it was as great as ever and only the Methodists would not share in it. Wesley remarks, with his usual good sense when dealing with a practical matter, “The Gentry of Cornwall may totally prevent it whenever they please. Only let the law take its course and the plundering will stop. Even if every labourer or tinner (i.e. tin miner) guilty of it were to be discharged and his name advertised to prevent his getting respectable employment, there would be no more of it.” In his peregrination Wesley did not disdain to visit and to note in his Journal objects of curiosity and interest. His active mind could not help occupying itself with anything exceptional, and many a traveller with nothing to do but investigate the locality has seen much less than he. Here is his description of how apprentices were made free of the corporation of Alnwick:
“Sixteen or seventeen, we were informed, were to receive their freedom this day, and in order thereto (such is the unparalleled wisdom of the present corporation, as well as of their forefathers), to walk through a great bog (purposely preserved for the occasion; otherwise it might have been drained long ago), which takes some of them to the neck, and many of them to the breast.”
A few months later he is in the south near Carisbrooke Castle, whither he walked in the afternoon.
“It stands upon a solid rock upon the top of a hill and commands a beautiful prospect. There is a well in it, cut quite through the rock, said to be seventy two yards deep, and another in the citadel, near a hundred. They drew up the water by an ass, which they assured us was sixty years old. But all the stately apartments lie in ruins. Only just enough of them is left to shew the chamber where poor King Charles was confined, and the windows through which he attempted to escape.”
From the steeple of Glasgow Cathedral Wesley surveys the country.
“A more fruitful and better cultivated plain is scarce to be seen in England. Indeed nothing is wanted but more trade (which would naturally bring more people) to make a great part of Scotland in no way inferior to the best counties in England.”
When he came to Edinburgh he was not so pleased with the High Street. “The situation of the city, on a hill shelving down on both sides, as well as to the east is inexpressibly fine. And the main street so broad and finely paved, with lofty houses on either side (many of them seven or eight stories high), is far beyond any in Great Britain. But how can it be suffered that all manner of filth should be thrown even into this street continually? Where are the magistracy, the gentry, the nobility of the land? Have they no concern for the honour of their nation? How long shall the capital city of Scotland, yea, and the chief street of it stink worse than a common sewer? Will no lover of this country, or of decency and common-sense find a remedy for it?”
On one occasion he went to the Tower of London, where lions used to be kept, with a man who played the German flute to see whether music had any influence on animals. The lions rose up and came to the front of the den and seemed all attention. A tiger started up and began continually leaping over and crawling under a lion. Wesley asks “Can we account for this by any principle of mechanism? can we account for it at all?” At Carn Brae in Cornwall he admires the Druidical remains. At Windsor he views the improvements of that “active and useful man the Duke of Cumberland,” especially the triangular tower built at the edge of Windsor Park. Here also he visited the house of a lover of the antique, “The oddest I ever saw with my eyes. Everything breathes antiquity; scarce a bedstead is to be seen that is not an hundred and fifty years old; and everything is out of the common way: for six hours I suppose these oddities would much delight a curious man; but after six months they would probably give him no more pleasure than a collection of feathers.” When he was eighty we find him in Holland delighted with the country and its people and his reception by Madam de Wassenaar. “She received us with that easy openness and affability which is almost peculiar to persons of quality.” The great hall in the Staat haus at Amsterdam reminds him of his old College hall at Christ Church, it is “near as large.”