Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/322

 sense of a conviction of sin, a new dread of hell, a new hope of heaven, took forms at once grotesque and sublime." But the masses were leavened. At the death of Wesley there were some eighty thousand Methodists; a hundred years later there were some twenty-five million. This revival not only roused the lethargy of the Church of England, but a "new moral enthusiasm" broke over the whole country, and henceforth a steady attempt was made to relieve human suffering, to educate the ignorant, to place a higher ideal before those of our ancestors who were depraved by the surrounding vice. Hospitals grew and thrived, Sunday-schools sprang into life, charities were endowed, the slave trade was put down, prisons reformed, and more mercy, pity, and human sympathy were bestowed on those who so sorely needed it. Perhaps the new movement may best be summed up in the familiar words: "Not only with our lips, but in our lives."

The lives of the agricultural labourers of this time called loudly for reform. At the accession of George III., England's wealth was derived mainly from agriculture, and her peaceful valleys were as yet undisturbed by the numerous factories that characterise the whole country to-day. The