with each other, for some time, yet frequently, to the inexpressible diversion of the company, they stumbled and tottered. * * * Not long after, a foot of one of the poor women slipped, and with great force she came again to the ground. * * * Mr. Coverley went himself to help her, and insisted that the other should stop.  A debate ensued, but the poor creature was too much hurt to move, and declared her utter inability to make another attempt.  Mr. Coverley was quite brutal; he swore at her with unmanly rage, and seemed scarce able to refrain even from striking her.”  It would be impossible perhaps to find a party of the upper ranks gathered at a country house at the present time, composed of persons who could have endured, without remonstrance, such treatment of a pair of superannuated horses; yet Miss Burney describes the efforts and sufferings of these old women as affording inexpressible diversion to the ladies and gentlemen who figure in her novel, and she evidently expects the reader to be equally entertained.  “Evelina” was written by a young woman who saw the best society, who was maid of honor to Queen Charlotte, who was universally admired for her delicacy and her talents, and whose novels are among the most refined of the time.

The higher ranks were much less influenced by the religious revival than the lower.  Although certainly not less in need of reformation, they were far less inclined to welcome it.  The fashionable indifference to religion was an obstacle which Wesley found much more difficult to overcome than the brutal ignorance of the inmates of Newgate.  After listening to a sermon by Whitefield, Bolingbroke complimented the preacher by saying that he had “done great justice to the divine attributes.”  The Duchess of Buckingham’s remarks on the preaching of the Methodists, in a letter to Lady Huntingdon, are an amusing commentary on the times.  “I thank your ladyship for the information concerning the Methodist preachers.  Their doctrines are most repulsive, and strongly tinctured with impertinence and disrespect toward their superiors, in perpetually endeavoring to level all ranks and do away with all distinctions.  It is monstrous to be told that you have a heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl the earth.  This is highly offensive and insulting, and I cannot but wonder that your ladyship should relish any sentiments so much at variance with high rank and good-breeding."[187] High rank and good-breeding, however, in the society of which the Duchess of Buckingham was so proud, were not considered inconsistent with habitual drunkenness, indecency, and profanity.  The vices which “the common wretches that crawl the earth” practised in addition to these, her Grace would have had difficulty in mentioning.