356 THE AWAKENING. 



■Madame de Stael declared that lie was the wittiest 

 man in England. But presently he withdrew from her 

 society and that of her friends, because it was brilliant 

 and agreeable. He also took his name off all his 

 clubs. He was travelling on the Continent with Pitt, 

 who was his bosom friend, when a change came over 

 him. In the days of his childhood he had been sent 

 to reside with an aunt who was a great admirer of 

 Whitfield's preaching, and kept up a friendly connec- 

 tion with the early Methodists. He was soon infected 

 with her ideas, and " there was remarked in him a rare 

 and pleasing character of piety in his twelfth year." 

 This excited much consternation among the other 

 members of his family. His mother at once came up 

 to London and fetched him home. " If Billy turns 

 Methodist," said his grandfather, "he shall not have a 

 sixpence of mine." We are informed that theatrical 

 diversions, card parties, and sumptuous suppers (at the 

 fashionable hour of six in the evening) obliterated 

 these impressions for a time. They were not, how- 

 ever, dead, for the perusal of Doddridge's Rise and 

 Progress was sufficient to revive them. This amiable 

 and excellent young man became the prey of a morbid 

 superstition. Often in the midst of enjoyment his 

 conscience told him he was not in the true sense of the 

 word a Christian. " I laughed, I sang, I was appa- 

 rently gay and happy, but the thought would steal 

 across me, What madness is all this : to continue easy 

 in a state in which a sudden call out of the world 

 would consign me to everlasting misery, and that when 

 eternal happiness is within my grasp." The sinful 

 worldling accordingly reformed. He declined Sunday 

 visits ; he got up earlier in the morning ; he wrestled 

 continually in prayer ; he began to keep a common- 



