objectors, "you mean a power which I exercise simply without any colleagues therein, this is certainly true, but I see no hurt in it." [Sidenote: Results of the movement.] The great body which he thus founded numbered a hundred thousand members at his death, and now counts its members in England and America by millions. But the Methodists themselves were the least result of the Methodist revival. Its action upon the Church, as we shall see later, broke the lethargy of the clergy who, under the influence of the "Evangelical" movement, were called to a loftier conception of their duties; while a powerful moral enthusiasm appeared in the nation at large. A new philanthropy reformed our prisons, infused clemency and wisdom into our penal laws, abolished the slave-trade, and gave the first impulse to popular education. [Sidenote: Revival of France.] From the new England which was springing up about him, from that new stir of national life and emotion of which the Wesleyan revival was but a part, Walpole stood utterly aloof. National enthusiasm, national passion, found no echo in his cool and passionless good sense. The growing consciousness in the people at large of a new greatness, its instinctive prevision of the coming of a time when England was to play a foremost part in the history of the world, the upgrowth of a nobler and loftier temper which should correspond to such a destiny, all were alike unintelligible to him. In the talk of patriotism and public virtue he saw mere rant and extravagance. "Men would grow wiser," he said, "and come out of that." The revival of English religion he looked on with an indifference lightly dashed with dread as a reawakening of fanaticism which might throw new obstacles in the way of religious liberty. In the face of the growing excitement therefore he clung as doggedly as ever to his policy of quiet at home and peace abroad. But peace was now threatened by a foe far more formidable than Spain. What had hitherto enabled England to uphold the settlement of Europe as established at the Peace of Utrecht was above all the alliance and backing of France. But it was clear that such an alliance could hardly be a permanent one. The Treaty of Utrecht had been a humiliation for France even more than for Spain. It had marked the failure of those dreams of European supremacy which the House of Bourbon had nursed ever since the close of the sixteenth century, and which Lewis the Fourteenth had all but turned from dreams into realities. Beaten and impoverished, France had bowed to the need of peace; but her strange powers of recovery had shown themselves in the years of tranquillity that peace secured; and with reviving wealth and the upgrowth of a new generation which had known nothing of the woes that followed Blenheim and Ramillies the old ambition started again into life. [Sidenote: Its union with Spain.]