_March 8._—At Wilberforce’s last night till 10 o’clock, and was not in bed till quarter past 11 P.M. Though I was up before 4 A.M., and had no sleep in the day, or very little, the consequence was that in the night just past I slept very soundly indeed, and till 6 A.M. Dean Milner[212] there, and I had much conversation with him about W. while he and Mr. W. were out of the room. He first made an impression on Wilberforce’s mind at Scarborough; he hinted on some person named being an enthusiast, but Milner (though not religious then himself) checked it with a firmness that made W. think. They afterwards travelled to Nice, and were there three months about the year 1783 or 1784. The Duke of Gloucester was then an infidel; the conversation M. had with him upon the journey had no other effect (indeed that was the capital one) but of making him serious in reading and considering the Bible, which he did with great industry and deep attention, bringing to it a _heart_ open to conviction; his health was injured by application, but his eternal soul was saved. He afterwards broke off his intimacies with a social fashionable set, and particularly from dinners which hurt his progress in Divine impersonation. He fairly and openly told his friends the reason. Pitt never joked or laughed at him—some did, but he never; all were sorry to lose him. But he was in earnest, and carried his determination into effect to give himself wholly to the care of his soul in the first place, and next to perform his temporal duties by assiduity in business. The Dean remarked the great good his book is likely to do from this time to the end of the world. Many, many may be saved by it. He dictated an answer to some quotations from David which the Duke of Grafton gave me the other day in argument against original sin, the righteousness named 1,000 years before Christ. He replied as I had done on the spot to the Duke, that these men had the _spirit_, and then were righteous before God in _Jesus Christ_ who saved from the creation. The Duke of Bedford’s death! How much I could write on that topic. I met Halifax at the Duke of Grafton’s. He died with what is called perfect courage, collectedness, and resolution that is perfectly hardened in insensibility. A most tremendous, awful, horrible case! But very difficult to separate affection for the amiable temper and useful life from a just condemnation of his utter want of religion and piety. _From the Duke of Bedford[213] in carrying out the plans of his late Brother_ ‘Woburn Abbey: March 28, 1802.