Note 208 — Chapter XXIII

“This extraordinary history of Lord Ferrers is closed (says Horace Walpole to George Montague): he was executed yesterday. Madness, that in other countries is disorder, is here a systematic character: it does not hinder people from forming a plan of conduct, and from even dying agreeably to it. You remember how the last Ratcliffe died with the utmost propriety; so did this horrid lunatic, coolly and sensibly. His own and his wife’s relations had asserted that he would tremble at last. No such thing; he shamed heroes. With all his madness, he was not mad enough to be struck with Lady Huntingdon’s sermons. The Methodists have nothing to brag of his conversion, though Whitefield prayed for him and preached about him. I have not heard that Lady Fanny dabbled with his soul.”