GEORGE, the celebrated preacher among the people called Methodists, was born in the year 1714, at the Bell in the city of Gloucester, which was then kept by his mother. At about 12 years of age he was put to a grammar-school; but his mother entering into a second marriage, which proved a disadvantageous one, he, when about 15, put on a blue apron, and served her in the capacity of a drawer or waiter. After continuing about a year in this servile employment, she turned over the business to his brother; who marrying, and George not agreeing with his sister-in-law, he left the inn. Some time after, meeting with an old school-fellow, then a fervor in Pembroke college, Oxford, he was induced to attempt getting into the same college in a like capacity, and succeeded. Here Mr Whitefield, who from his own account appears to have always had a strong tincture of enthusiasm in his constitution from his very childhood, distinguished himself by the austerity of his devotion, and acquired considerable eminence in some religious assemblies in that city. At the age of 21, the fame of his piety recommended him so effectually to Dr Benson, then bishop of Gloucester, that he made him a voluntary offer of ordination. Immediately after this regular admission into the ministry, Mr Whitefield applied himself to the most extraordinary, the most indefatigable, duties of his character, preaching daily in prisons, fields, and open streets, wherever he thought there would be a likelihood of making proselytes. Having at length made himself universally known in England, he embarked for America, where the tenets of Methodism began to spread very fast under his friends the Wesleys; and first determined upon the institution of the orphan-house at Georgia, which he afterwards effected. After a long course of peregrination, his fortune increased as his fame extended among his followers, and he erected two very extensive buildings for public worship, under the name of Tabernacles; one in Tottenham-Court Road, and the other in Moorfields. Here, with the help of some assistants, he continued for several years, attended by very crowded congregations, and quitting the kingdom only occasionally. Besides the two tabernacles already mentioned, Mr Whitefield, by being chaplain to the countess dowager of Huntingdon, was connected with two other religious meetings, one at Bath, and the other at Tunbridge, chiefly erected under that lady's patronage. By a lively, fertile, and penetrating genius, by the most unwearied zeal, and by a forcible and persuasive delivery, he never failed of the desired effect upon his ever crowded and admiring audiences. In America, however, which always engaged much of his attention, he was defined to finish his course; and he died at Newberry, about 40 miles from Boston in New England, in 1770.