In order to estimate the complex influences surrounding Hannah More in
London, and to appreciate the manner in which she stood the ordeal of
passing through "Vanity Fair," it is necessary to bear in mind the
social, moral, and religious aspects of the people about the middle of
the eighteenth century.

What are now considered flagrant vices were either unnoticed or tacitly
sanctioned. Of social refinement, as we now understand the term, there
was comparatively little. Coarse jokes, swearing, and profanity were
almost as common in "polite society" as in the back streets now. The
literature of the day, excepting the writings of Addison, Johnson,
Steele, and a few others, ministered to the low tastes prevalent amongst
both the upper and the lower classes. Religion had well nigh lost all
vitality. With the majority of people it had become the subject either
of jest, sceptical hostility, or the utmost indifference.

One of Archbishop Seeker's charges contained the following startling
statement:--"In this we cannot be mistaken, that an open and professed
disregard of religion is become, through a variety of unhappy causes,
the distinguishing character of the present age.... Indeed, it hath
already brought in such dissoluteness and contempt of principle in the
higher part of the world, and such profligate intemperance and
fearlessness of committing crimes in the lower part, as must, if this
torrent of impiety stop not, become absolutely fatal.... Christianity is
now ridiculed and railed at with very little reserve; and the teachers
of it without any at all." [1]

[Footnote 1: Charge to clergy, 1738. See vol. v. of _Works_, Dublin,
1775.]

The great lawyer, Blackstone, says he went from church to church to hear
noted London preachers, and it was impossible for him to tell from their
discourses whether these luminaries were followers of Confucius,
Mahomet, or Christ. George III. felt compelled to address a letter of
expostulation to Archbishop Cornwallis for giving balls and routs at
Lambeth Palace on Saturday nights, so that they ran into Sunday
morning.[2] The Church had given hardly a thought to either the
religious or secular education of the masses. Gross ignorance pervaded
the ranks of the poor all over England. Although the English Bible was
in the people's hands, it was almost a dead letter.

[Footnote 2: This letter may be found in _The Life and Times of Lady
Huntingdon_.]

But the voice of awakening had been hea