Читать книгу The Great Revival of the Eighteenth Century: with a supplemental chapter on the revival in America онлайн

27 страница из 44

What a singular assembly from time to time! the square dark face of that old gentleman, painfully hobbling in on his crutched stick—face once as handsome as that of St. John, now the disappointed, moody features of the massive, but sceptical intelligence of Bolingbroke; poor worn-out old Chesterfield, cold and courtly, yet seeming so genial and humane, coming again and again, and yet again; those reckless wits, and leaders of the ton and all high society, Bubb Doddington, afterwards Lord Melcombe, and George Selwyn; the Duchess of Montague, with her young daughter; Lady Cardigan, often there, if her mother, Sarah of Marlborough, were but seldom a visitor. Charles Townshend, the great minister, often came; and his friend, Lord Lyttleton, who really must have been in sympathy with some of the objects of the assembly, if we may judge from his Essay on the Conversion of St. Paul, a piece of writing which will never lose its value. There you might have seen even the great commoner, William Pitt, afterwards Earl of Chatham; but we can understand why he would be there to listen to the manifold notes of an eloquence singularly resembling, in many particulars, his own. And, in fact, where such persons were present, we might be sure that the entire nobility of the country was represented. It might be tempting to loiter amidst these scenes a little longer. It was an experiment made by the Countess; she probably found it almost a failure, and, in the course of a few years, turned her attention to the larger ideas connected with the evangelisation of England, and the training of young men for the work of the ministry. She long outlived all those brilliant hosts she had gathered round her in the prime of life. But we cannot doubt that some good was effected by this preaching to “people of reputation.” Courtiers like Walpole sneered, but it saved the movement to a great degree, when it became popular, from being suspected as the result of political faction; and probably, as all these nobles and gentry passed away to their various country seats, when they heard of the preachers in their neighbourhoods, and received the complaints of the bishops and their clergy, with some contempt for the messengers, they were able to feel, and to say, that there was nothing much more dreadful than the love of God and His good will to men in their message.