and insulting; and I cannot but wonder that your ladyship should relish any sentiments so much at variance with high rank and good breeding.  I shall be most happy to come and hear your favourite preacher.’[759] Horace Walpole (who, however, is not always to be trusted when he is writing on religious matters) wrote to Sir Horace Mann, March 23, 1749:  ’Methodism is more fashionable than anything but brag; the women play very deep at both—­as deep, it is much suspected, as the Roman matrons did at the mysteries of Bona Dea.  If gracious Anne were alive she would make an admirable defendress of the new faith, and would build fifty more churches for female proselytes.’[760] It is fair to add, however, that some of the ablest among the hearers were the most impressed.  David Hume’s opinion of Whitefield’s preaching has already been noticed.  David Garrick[761] was certainly not disposed to ridicule it.  There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of Lord Bolingbroke’s sentiments expressed in a private letter to the Earl of Marchmont:  ’I hope you heard from me by myself, as well as of me by Mr. Whitefield.  This apostolical person preached some time ago at Lady Huntingdon’s, and I should have been curious to hear him.  Nothing kept me from going but an imagination that there was to be a select auditory.  That saint, our friend Chesterfield, was there, and I heard from him an extreme good account of the sermon.’[762] Lord Bolingbroke afterwards did hear Whitefield, and said to Lady Huntingdon:  ’You may command my pen when you will; it shall be drawn in your service.  For, admitting the Bible to be true, I shall have little apprehension of maintaining the doctrines of predestination and grace against all your revilers.’  We do not hear that this new defender of the faith did employ his pen in Lady Huntingdon’s service, and few perhaps will regret that he did not.  The extreme dislike of Lords Bolingbroke and Chesterfield for the regular clergy, whom they would be glad to annoy in any way they could, might have had something to do with their patronage of the ‘new lights,’ as the Methodists were called.  But this cannot be said of others.  The Earl of Bath, for instance, accompanied a donation of 50_l._ to Lady Huntingdon for the Tabernacle at Bristol with the following remark:  ’Mocked and reviled as Mr. Whitefield is (1749) by all ranks of society, still I contend that the day will come when England will be just, and own his greatness as a reformer, and his goodness as a minister of the Most High God.’[763] Lord Chesterfield gave 20_l._ to the same object.

Lady Huntingdon was not content with enlisting the nobility in favour of her cause.  She made her way to the Court itself.  She was scandalised by the gaiety of Archbishop Cornwallis’s household, and, after having fruitlessly remonstrated with the primate, she laid her case before the King and the Queen.  She was not only successful in the immediate object of her visit—­the King, in consequence,