re congenial to the teaching of their favourite ministers and
chapels. Young and Blair thoroughly suited them. Wesley admired Young's
poem, and even proposed to bring out an edition. In his _Further Appeal
to Men of Reason and Religion_, Wesley, like Brown and Hartley, draws up
a striking indictment of the manners of the time. He denounces the
liberty and effeminacy of the nobility; the widespread immorality; the
chicanery of lawyers; the jobbery of charities; the stupid
self-satisfaction of Englishmen; the brutality of the Army; the
indolence and preferment humbug of the Church--the true cause, as he
says, of the 'contempt for the clergy' which had become proverbial. His
remedy of course is to be found in a revival of true religion. He
accepts the general sentiment that the times are out of joint, though he
would seek for a deeper cause than that which was recognised by the
political satirist. While Young was weeping at Welwyn, James Hervey was
meditating among the tombs in Devonshire, and soon afterwards gave
utterance to the result in language inspired by very bad taste, but
showing a love of nature and expressing the 'sentimentalism' which was
then a new discovery. It is said to have eclipsed Law's _Serious Call_,
which I have already mentioned as giving, in admirable literary form,
the view of the contemporary world which naturally found favour with
religious thinkers.

These symptoms indicate the tendencies of the rising class to which the
author has mainly to address himself. It has ceased to be fully
represented by the upper social stratum whose tastes are reflected by
Pope. No distinct democratic sentiment had yet appeared; the
aristocratic order was accepted as inevitable or natural; but there was
a vague though growing sentiment that the rulers are selfish and
corrupt. There is no strong sceptical or anti-religious sentiment; but a
spreading conviction that the official pastors are scandalously careless
in supplying the wants of their flocks. The philosophical and literary
canons of the scholar and gentleman have become unsatisfactory; the
vulgar do not care for the delicate finish appreciated by your
Chesterfield and acquired in the conversations of polite society, and
the indolent scepticism which leads to metaphysical expositions, and is
not allied with any political or social passion, does not appeal to
them. The popular books of the preceding generation had been the
directly religious books: Baxter's _Sa