re at work which tended to raise the tone of morality and religion in
all orders of society. The upper classes had a good example set them by
the blameless lives of the King and the Queen. In the present day, when
it is the fashion to ridicule the foibles and to condemn the troublesome
interference in State affairs of the well-meaning but often ill judging
King, it is the more necessary to bear in mind the debt of gratitude
which the nation owed him for the good effects which his personal
character unquestionably produced--effects which, though they told more
directly and immediately upon the upper classes, yet permeated more or
less through all the strata of society. Among the middle classes, too,
there arose a set of men whose influence for good it would be difficult
to exaggerate. Foremost among them stands the great and good Dr.
Johnson. 'Dr. Johnson,' writes Lord Mahon, 'stemmed the tide of
infidelity.' And the greatest of modern satirists does not state the
case too strongly when he declares that 'Johnson had the ear of the
nation. His immense authority reconciled it to loyalty and shamed it out
of irreligion. He was revered as a sort of oracle, and the oracle
declared for Church and King. He was a fierce foe to all sin, but a
gentle enemy to all sinners.'[707] Sir J. Reynolds, and E. Burke, and
Hogarth, and Pitt, each in his way, helped on the good work. The rising
Evangelical school--the Newtons, the Venns, the Cecils, the Romaines,
among the clergy, and the Wilberforces, the Thorntons, the Mores, the
Cowpers, among the laity--all affected beneficially to an immense extent
the upper and middle classes, while among the lower classes the
Methodist movement was effecting incalculable good. These latter
influences, however, were far too important an element in the national
amelioration to be dealt with at the end of a chapter. Suffice it here
to add that, glaring as were the abuses of the Church of the eighteenth
century, they could not and did not destroy her undying vitality. Even
when she reached her nadir there was sufficient salt left to preserve
the mass from becoming utterly corrupt. The fire had burnt low, but
there was yet enough light and heat left to be fanned into a flame which
was in due time to illumine the nation and the nation's Church.

J.H.O.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 648: In 1705, 1706, 1710, 1711, 1714, 1715, &c. &c., there
were High Church mobs.]

[Footnote 649: Coxe's _Memoirs of Sir S. Walp