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to have been the limit of his voyage in this direction. It must be observed also that amber is found on the western coasts of Germany, as well as in the Baltic, though not in equal abundance.

It is a very singular fact that no mention is found in any ancient writer, in connexion with the voyage of Pytheas, of the Cassiterides or Tin Islands, the exploration of which might naturally have been supposed to have been one of the chief objects of his voyage. It is indeed not impossible that the statements on this subject preserved to us from Timæus, who wrote less than a century after him, were derived from Pytheas, though there is no proof of this. The trade with those islands was probably at this period exclusively in the hands of the Phoenicians, but we know that at a later time a considerable portion of the supply was carried overland through Gaul to Massilia. Whether the voyage of Pytheas had any effect in contributing to bring about the diversion of this lucrative trade we have unfortunately no information.

Whatever uncertainty still hangs around all that has been transmitted to us concerning the actual explorations of Pytheas. it is certain that he had one merit which distinguished him from almost all his contemporaries: he was a good astronomer, and was one of the first who made observations for the determination of latitudes, among others that of his native place Massilia, which he fixed with remarkable accuracy, so that his result, which was within a few miles of the truth, was adopted by Ptolemy, and became the basis of his map of the Western Mediterranean. Pytheas was also the first among the Greeks who arrived at any correct notion of the tides, and not only indicated their connexion with the moon but pointed out their periodical fluctuations in accordance with the phases of that luminary. Other observations concerning the manners and customs of the inhabitants of these remote regions are ascribed to him that are undoubtedly correct and tend strongly to prove that he had himself really visited them. Among these are the gradual disappearance of various kinds of grain as one advanced towards the north; the use of fermented liquors made from corn and honey; and the habit of threshing out their corn in large covered barns, instead of on open threshing-floors as in Greece and Italy, on account of the want of sun and abundance of rain. The fragments of Pytheas have been collected by Arvedson (Upsala, 1824) Of the numerous and by Fuhr (De Pythea Massiliensi, Darmstadt, 1835). treatises and dissertations on the subject see for those of earlier date Ukert's "Bemerkungen über Pytheas" (in vol. i. of his Geog. d. Griechen u. Römer, pp. 298-309), which contains an excellent summary of all that is known concerning the author and his work. The question has been also discussed by Sir G. C. Lewis, in his Historical Survey of the Astronomy of the Ancients (pp.

466-480, London, 1862), by Mr Bunbury, in his History of Ancient Geograph (vol. i. chap. xv. sect. 2), and by Mr Elton, in his Origins of English History (London, 1882). A very elaborate but prolix and somewhat confused investigation of the whole subject will be found in Müllenhoff's Deutsche Alterthums(E. H. B.) kunde (vol. i. pp. 211-497, Berlin, 1870).

PYTHON, a genus of gigantic snakes inhabiting the tropical parts of Africa and Asia, and known in some parts of the British possessions by the name of "rock-snakes." On account of their general appearance, beautifully-marked skin, large size, and similarity of habits they are frequently confounded with the true boas of the New World and misnamed "boa-constrictors." They differ from them, however, by having a double row of scutes under the tail, pits in the shields round the margins of the upper and lower jaws, and teeth in the intermaxillary bone.

Africa is inhabited by three species (Python seba, P.regius, and P. natalensis), and Asia by two (Python molurus and P. reticulatus), the former of these two species being found on the continent of India and in Ceylon, the latter in the large islands of the Archipelago and in the Malayan Peninsula. In Australasia and New Guinea similar snakes occur, but they are of much smaller size and differ in essential structural characters from the rock-snakes. These latter are among the largest of living reptiles; although their dimensions and strength have been much exaggerated, specimens of 18 and 20 feet have been brought to Europe, and reliable statements of the occurrence of individuals which measured 30 feet are on record. Snakes of this size will easily overpower and kill one of the small species of deer or antelopes which abound in their native haunts, a sheep, or a good-sized dog; but the width of their mouth

would not permit them to swallow an animal larger than a half-grown sheep. The way in which they seize and kill their prey does not differ from that observed in num

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Python reticulatus (India).

erous other non-venomous snakes: after having seized their victim, they smother it by constriction, throwing several coils of the body over and round it. In swallowing they always commence with the head; and, as they prey. exclusively on mammals and birds, the hairs and feathers offer a considerable impediment to the passage through the narrow but distensible throat. The process of deglutition is therefore slow, although facilitated by the great quantity of saliva discharged over the body of the victim. During the time of digestion the snake is very lazy, and unwilling to move and to defend itself when attacked. At other times these animals are fierce enough, although always harmless to man if left unmolested. In captivity they seem to become used to those who attend upon them, but their apparent tameness is due rather to the depressing influence of a colder climate than to a change of their naturally excitable temper. Rock-snakes are mostly arboreal, and prefer localities in the vicinity of water to which animals resort for the purpose of drinking. They move, climb, and swim with equal facility. It has now been well established by observations on specimens in a state of nature as well as in captivity that the female rock-snake incubates her eggs for about two months, at the end of which period the young are hatched, and probably remain under the protection of the mother for a few weeks longer. The snake collects the eggs into a conical heap, round which she coils herself, entirely covering them so that her head rests in the centre on the top of the cone. In this position the animal remains without food throughout the whole period of incubation, and an increase of the temperature between the coils of the snake has been observed in every case.

PYX. See MINT, vol. xvi. p. 483.

Q

145

was written in Greek with the straight stroke vertical, 9, as in the Phoenician alphabet from which it was borrowed, and was called koppa, the equivalent of the Hebrew koph. It is found sparingly on some old inscriptions of Rhodes, of some of the Egean islands, of Corinth and of Syracuse, and most frequently in the Chalcidian colonies of Sicily and Italy. But it was soon supplanted by kappa, and survived only in numeration as the representative of the number 90. It went to Rome with the Chalcidian alphabet of Cumæ, and was written at first with the vertical line; but the stroke soon became slant, so that the symbol got the form it still retains (Q).

Q

There is a slight but real distinction of sound between the so-called palatal and velar k. The first is the ordinary k, for which the back of the tongue is raised against the back part of the hard palate. The second is produced by raising the tongue against the soft palate or velum palati, that is, rather farther back in the mouth. This sound has a tendency to be accompanied by a slight rounding of the lips; this causes an equally slight w sound after the k. It is probable that the velar k with this parasitic w was in use for a time in Greece, and that it was represented by the koppa; the symbol would otherwise have been totally unnecessary; also the koppa is generally followed by u or o, which, on this view, is natural. We know that in Greece ku must have been an intermediate sound between k and p in words where k was labialized, such as roμаι from root sak (see under K). But this intermediate sound was not retained in the language: either the w was dropped and the sound reverted to k, or p was produced by the assimilating force of the w; therefore all need for a symbol koppa vanished. But in Latin the middle step remained, as in sequor; therefore the symbol was needed. But the parasitic sound became a complete w; and to denote this was regularly written after the q. Therefore even in Latin the symbol was really otiose, for kv would have been quite sufficient, and did actually suffice for the Umbrian and Oscan, which never possessed the q. In old inscriptions we find q alone when the following vowel is u, as in Mirqurios, pequnia. In later times, when o passed by weakening into u, a preceding qu was written c; thus quom became cum, to avoid the double u of quum. The qu of the Latin naturally passed on into the Romanic languages. It passed into the Teutonic languages in borrowed words, such as quart, but made its way into Teutonic words also; thus, in English, cwén, cwellan are now spelt queen, quell.

QUADRILATERAL, a military term applied to any combination of four fortresses mutually supporting each other, but especially to that of the four fortified towns of Mantua, Peschiera, Verona, and Legnago, the two former of which are situated on the Mincio and the two latter on the Adige. The real value of the Quadrilateral, which gave Austria such a firm hold on Lombardy, lay in the extraordinary natural strength of Mantua and in the readiness with which troops and supplies could be poured into Verona from the north.

See "The Quadrilateral," in the Cornhill Magazine, 1862; and Professor Malfatti, Il Quadrilatero, Milan, 1866.

QUADRUMANA. See MAMMALIA, vol. xv. p. 444, and APE, vol. ii. p. 148.

QUESTOR was the title of a Roman magistrate whose functions, at least in the later times of the republic, were mainly financial. The origin of the quæstorship is somewhat obscure, but on the whole it was probably instituted

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simultaneously with the consulship in 509 B.C.1 The number of the quæstors was originally two, but this was successively increased to four (in 421 B.C.), eight (in 267 or 241 B.C.), and by Sulla (in 81 B.C.) to twenty. Cæsar raised the number to forty (in 45 B.c.), but Augustus reduced it again to twenty, which remained the regular number under the empire. When the number was raised from two to four in 421 B.C. the office was thrown open to the plebeians, and it was the first office that was so opened. It was the lowest of the great offices of state, and hence it was regularly the first sought by aspirants to a political career. Towards the close of the republic, if not earlier, the successful candidate was bound to have completed his thirtieth year before he entered on office, but Augustus lowered the age to twenty-five. Originally the quæstors seem to have been nominated by the consuls independently, but later, perhaps from the fall of the decemvirs (449 B.C.), they were elected by the people assembled in tribes (comitia tributa) and presided over by a consul or another of the higher magistrates. The quæstors held office for one year, but, like the consuls and prætors, they were often continued in office with the title of proquæstor. Indeed it was a regular rule that the quæstor attached to a higher magistrate should hold office as long as his superior; hence, when a consul regularly presided over the city for one year, and afterwards as proconsul governed a province for another year, his quæstor also regularly held office for two years. Before the election of the quæstors the senate decided the duties to be undertaken by them, and after election these duties were distributed amongst the new quæstors either by lot or by the choice of the higher magistrates to whom a quastor was assigned. A peculiar burden laid on the quæstors, not so much as an official duty, but rather as a sort of fee exacted from all who entered on the political career, was the paving of the high roads, for which Claudius substituted the exhibition of gladiatorial games. Various classes of quæstors may be distinguished according to the duties they had respectively to discharge. Up to 421 B.C. there were only two quæstors, and when fresh ones were added the two original quæstors were distinguished by the appellation of urban quæstors (quastores urbani), doubtless because they were bound to remain in Rome during their term of office.

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like those of the consuls, were of a general and undefined nature;
1. The Urban Quæstors.—Originally the duties of the quaestors,
specialization of function had not yet arisen-the consuls were
simply the superior, the questors simply the inferior magistrates
pos
of the republic. From a very early time, however, the quæstors
possessed criminal to the exclusion of civil jurisdiction. The very
name quæstor" (from quærere, "to search out") means "inves-
tigator," "inquisitor." In the code of the Twelve Tables they
are designated quæstores parricidii, "inquisitors of parricide or
murder and perhaps originally this was their full title, which was
inal judges fell into the background. In addition to parricide or
afterwards abbreviated into quæstors when their functions as crim-
murder we can hardly doubt that all other crimes fell within the
jurisdiction of the questors; political crimes only seem to have
been excepted. The criminal jurisdiction of the quæstors appears

1 Plutarch (Popl., 12) states that the office was instituted by the first consul. Tacitus, on the other hand (Ann., xi. 22), says that it datel mentioned in the Lex Curiata of the consul Brutus, which Tacitus from the time of the kings, but his ground is merely that they were assumes to have been identical with that of the kings.

The etymology and original meaning of parricidium are doubtful. In the latter part of the wond we have, of course, the same root as in cadere, "to kill," but whether or not the former part is from pater, “a father," or from the same root that we have in per-peram, per-jurium, is a moot point. Mommsen takes the latter view.

XX.

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only to have terminated when towards the close of the republic | the body is reddish-brown, irregularly banded and marked
trial by permanent courts (quæstiones perpetua) was extended to
criminal cases.1

The quæstors had also charge of the public treasury (ærarium) in the temple of Saturn, and this was in the later times of the republic their most important function. They kept the keys of the treasury and had charge of its contents, including not only coin and bullion but also the military standards and a large number of public documents, which in later times comprised all the laws as well as the decrees of the senate. Their functions as keepers of the treasury were withdrawn from the urban quæstors by Augustus and transferred to other magistrates, but the office itself continued to exist into the 3d century, though as to the nature of the duties attached to it we have little or no information.

with dark brown stripes, stronger on the head and neck
and gradually becoming fainter until lost behind the
shoulder. There is a broad dark median dorsal stripe.
The under surface of the body, the legs, and tail are nearly
white, without stripes. The crest is very high, surmounted
by a standing mane, banded alternately brown and white.
Though never really domesticated, quaggas have occasion-
ally been trained to harness. The accompanying figure is

2. The Military Questors.-These were instituted in 421 B.C., when two new quæstors were added to the original two. They never had a distinctive appellation like that of the urban quæstors, from whom, however, they were clearly distinguished by the fact that, while the urban quæstors did not stand in a special relation of subordination to any particular magistrate, a non-urban quæstor was regularly assigned as an indispensable assistant or adjutant to every general in command, whose name or title the quæstor usually added to his own. 2 Originally they were the adjutants of the consuls only, afterwards of the provincial prætors, and still later of the proconsuls and proprætors. The dictator alone among military commanders had no quæstor, because a quæstor would have been a limitation to his powers. The governor of Sicily had two quæstors; all other governors and commanders had but one. Between the quæstor and his superior a close personal relation, analogous to that between a son and his father, existed, and was not severed when their official connexion ceased. Not till the close of the republic do cases occur of a quaestor being sent to a province invested with prætorial and even consular powers; in one case at least the quæstor so sent had a second quæstor placed under him. The duties of the military quæstor, like those of the treasury quæstor, were primarily financial. Moneys due to a provincial governor from the state treasury were often, perhaps regularly, received and disbursed by the quæstor; the magazines seem to have been under his charge; he coined money, on which not unfrequently his name appears alone. The booty taken in war was not necessarily under the control of the quæstor, but was dealt with, especially in later times, by inferior officers called præfecti fabrum. But, though his duties were primarily financial, the quaestor was after all the chief assistant or adjutant of his superior in command, and as such he was invested with a certain degree of military power; under the republic his military rank was superior to that of the legates, though under the empire this relation was reversed. When the general left his province before the arrival of his successor he usually committed it to the care of his quæstor, and, if he died or was incapacitated from naming his successor, the questor acted as his representative. Unlike the urban quaestor, the military quæstor possessed not a criminal but a civil jurisdiction corresponding to that of the ædiles 3. The Italian Quæstors. The subjugation of Italy occasioned the institution (in 267 B. C.) of four new quæstors, who appear to have been called quæstores classici because they were originally intended to superintend the building of the fleet (classis); their functions, however, are very imperfectly known. Though no doubt intended to assist the consuls, they were not subordinated (like the military quæstors) to a special consul. They were stationed at Ostia, at Cales in Campania, and in Gaul about the Padus (Po). The station of the fourth is not mentioned; perhaps it was Lilybæum in Sicily.

at Rome.

QUAGGA, or COUAGGA, an animal of the genus Equus (see HORSE, vol. xii. p. 175), nearly allied to the zebra, which formerly was met with in vast herds on the great plains of South Africa between the Cape Colony and the Vaal river, but now, in common with most of the larger wild animals of that region, becoming extremely scarce, owing to the encroachments of European civilization. In length of ears and character of tail it more resembles the horse than it does the ass, although it agrees with the latter in wanting the small bare callosity in the inner side of the hind leg, just below the hock, characteristic of the horse. The colour of the head, neck, and upper parts of

1 It is often supposed that the quastores parricidii were an old magistracy quite distinct from the ordinary quæstors. For the identification of the two, see Mommsen, Römisches Staatsrecht, ii., pt. 1, p. 506.

2 Thus Cicero speaks of the provincia consularis of the quæstor, and we find quæstor Cn. Pompei, &c.

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reduced from a painting made from one of a pair which were driven in Hyde Park by Mr Sheriff Parkins in the early part of the present century. The name is an imitation of the shrill barking neigh of the animal, "ouag-ga, ouag-ga," the last syllable very much prolonged. It must be remembered, however, in reading books of African travel that the same word is very commonly applied by hunters to another and more completely striped species, called by zoologists Burchell's zebra.

QUAIL (Old French Quaille, Mod. French Caille, Italian Quaglia, Low Latin Quaquila, Dutch Kwakkel, and Kwartel, German Wachtel, Danish Vagtel), a very wellknown bird throughout almost all countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa, in modern ornithology the Coturnix communis or C. dactylisonans. This last epithet was given from the peculiar three-syllabled call-note of the cock, which has been grotesquely rendered in several European lanpopularly known by the nickname of "Wet-my-lips" or guages, and in some parts of Great Britain the species is "Wet-my-feet." The Quail varies somewhat in colour, and the variation is rather individual than attributable to local causes; but generally the plumage may be described as reddish-brown above, almost each feather being transversely patched with dark brown interrupted by a longitudinal stripe of light buff; the head is dark brown above, with three longitudinal streaks of ochreous-white; the sides of the breast and flanks are reddish-brown, distinctly striped with ochreous-white; the rest of the lower parts are pale buff, clouded with a darker shade, and passing into white on the belly. The cock, besides being generally brighter in tint, not unfrequently has the chin and a double-throat band of reddish or blackish-brown, which marks are wanting in the hen, whose breast is usually spotted. Quails breed on the ground, as all gallinaceous birds commonly do, and lay from nine to fifteen eggs of a yellowish-white, blotched and spotted with dark brown. Though essentially migratory by nature, not a few Quails pass the winter in the northern hemisphere and even in Britain, and many more in southern Europe. In March and April they cross the Mediterranean from the south on the way to their breed

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ing homes in large bands, but these are said to be as nothing compared with the enormous flights that emigrate from Europe towards the end of September. During both migrations immense numbers are netted for the market, since they are almost universally esteemed as delicate meat. On capture they are placed in long narrow and low cages, darkened to prevent the prisoners from fighting, and, though they are often so much crowded as to be hardly able to stir, the loss by death that ensues is but trifling. Food, usually millet or hempseed, and water are supplied in troughs hung in front, and thus these little birds are transported by tens of thousands from the shores of the Mediterranean for consumption in the most opulent and populous cities of Europe. The flesh of Quails caught in The flesh of Quails caught in spring commonly proves dry and indifferent, but that of those taken in autumn, especially when they have been kept long enough to grow fat, as they quickly do, is excellent. In no part of the British Islands at present do Quails exist in sufficient numbers to be the especial object of sport, though there are many places in which a few, and in some seasons more than a few, yearly fall to the gun. When made to take wing, which is not always easily done, they rise with great speed, but on such occasions they seldom fly far, and no one seeing them only thus would be inclined to credit them with the power of extensive migration that they possess, though this is often overtaxed, and the birds in their transmarine voyages frequently drop exhausted into the sea or on any vessel that may be in their way. In old days they were taken in England in a net, attracted thereto by means of a Quail-call,—a simple instrument,1 the use of which is now wholly neglected,—on which their notes are easily imitated.

Five or six other species of the restricted genus Coturnix are now recognized; but the subject of the preceding remarks is generally admitted to be that intended by the author of the book of Exodus (xvi. 13) as having supplied food to the Israelites in the wilderness, though a few ornithological writers have thought that bird to have been a SAND-GROUSE (q.v.). In South Africa and India allied species, C. delegorguii and C. coromandelica, the latter known as the Rain-Quail, respectively occur, as well as the commoner one, which in Australia and Tasmania is wholly replaced by C. pectoralis, the Stubble-Quail of the colonists. In New Zealand another species, C. nova-zelandia, was formerly very abundant in some districts, but is considered to have been nearly if not quite extirpated within the last twenty years by bush-fires. Some fifteen or perhaps more species of Quails, inhabiting the Indian and Australian Regions, have been separated, perhaps unnecessarily, to form the genera Synocus, Perdicula, Excalphatoria, and so forth; but they call for no particular remark.

America has some fifty or sixty species of birds which are commonly deemed Quails, though by some authors placed in a distinct Family or Sub-family Odontophorinæ.2 The best known is the Virginian Quail, or Colin, as it is frequently called that being, according to Hernandez, its old Mexican name. It is the Ortyx virginianus of modern ornithology, and has a wide distribution in North America, in some parts of which it is known as the "Partridge," as well as by the nickname of "Bob-White," aptly bestowed upon it from the call-note of the cock. Many attempts have been made to introduce this bird to England (as indeed similar trials have been made in the United States with Quails from Europe); but, though it has been turned out by hundreds, and has been frequently known to breed after liberation, its numbers rapidly diminish until it wholly disappears. The beautiful tufted Quail of Cali

One is figured in Rowley's Ornithological Miscellany (ii. p. 363).
They form the subject of a monograph in folio by Gould, published

between 1844 and 1850.

fornia, Lophortyx californica, has also been tried in Europe without success. All these American Quails or Colins seem to have the habit of perching on trees, which none of the Old-World forms possess.

Interesting from many points of view as is the group of Birds last mentioned, there is another which, containing a score of species (or perhaps more) often termed Quails or Button-Quails, is of still greater importance in the eyes of the systematist. This is that comprehended by the genus Turnix, or Hemipodius of some authors, the anatomical structure of which removes it far from the genera Coturnix, Ortyx, and their allies, and even from any of the normal Gallina. Prof. Huxley, as already stated (ORNITHOLOGY, vol. xviii. p. 36), would regard it as the representative of a generalized stock from which the Charadriomorpha and Alectoromorpha, to say nothing of other groups, have sprung. Want of space prevents our here dwelling upon these curious birds. One species, T. sylvatica, inhabits Barbary and southern Spain, and under the name of Andalucian Hemipode has been included (though on evidence not wholly satisfactory) among British Birds as a reputed straggler. The rest are natives of various parts of the Ethiopian, Indian, and Australian Regions. It is characteristic of the genus Turnix to want the hind toe; but the African Ortyxelus and the Australian Pedionomus which have been referred to its neighbourhood have four toes on each foot, and, since nothing is known of the anatomy or habits of the first and but little of those of the second, their position must at present be considered doubtful. (A. N.) QUAKERS. The Quakers, or, as they call themselves, the Society of Friends, are a body of Christians small in number but presenting several features of interest. To the student of ecclesiastical history they are curious as exhibiting a form of Christianity widely aberrant from the prevalent types, and as a body of worshippers without a creed, a liturgy, a priesthood, or a sacrament; to the student of social science they are interesting as having given to women an almost equal place with men in their church organization, and as having attempted to eliminate war, oaths, and litigation from their midst. The student of English constitutional history will observe the success with which they have, by the mere force of passive resistance, obtained from the legislature and the courts indulgence for all their scruples and a recognition of the legal validity of their customs; whilst to the student of American history the Quakers will ever be remarkable for the prominent part they played in the colonization of New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

3

History. The history of Quakerism in England may conveniently be divided into four periods :-(1) from the first preaching of Fox in 1648 to the establishing of a church organization in 1666; (2) from that date to the Revolution of 1688; (3) from the Revolution to 1835; and (4) from 1835 to the present time.

1. George Fox (q.v.), the son of a weaver of Drayton in Leicestershire, was the founder of the Quakers. He began to preach in 1648, and in a few years gathered around him a great body of followers and a considerable number of itinerant preachers like himself, who zealously promul gated his doctrines. Amongst these Edward Burrough was one of the most remarkable. In 1655 these preachers numbered seventy-three. Fox and his fellow-preachers spoke whenever opportunity offered sometimes in churches,

3 Col. Legge's observations on the habits of Pedionomus in the Zoological Society's Proceedings (1869, pp. 236-238) would seem to shew a Limicoline affinity. Garrod in the same work (1873, p. 34) figured the skull as that of a Turnicine, in which view Forbes acquiesced (Ibis, 1882, pp. 389, 431); but against it Col. Legge immediately protested (tom. cit., p. 610).

2. The second period in the history of Quakerism is marked by the introduction into the body, hitherto unorganized, of an organization and a discipline principally due to the mind and energy of Fox, by a more scholarly and learned air given to the Quaker productions by the writings of William Penn and Robert Barclay, and by the part which the Quakers played in the colonization of New Jersey and of Pennsylvania. It is not wonderful that the introduction of an organization and a discipline met with great opposition amongst a people taught to believe that the inward light of each individual man was the only true guide for his conduct. The project met with some opposition at the time, and at a later period (1683), from persons of considerable reputation in the body. Wilkinson, Rogers, Story, and others raised a party against Fox as regards the management of the affairs of the society, and asserted that the meetings for discipline which had been established were useless, and that every man ought to be guided by the Spirit of God in his own mind, and not to be governed by rules of man. They drew a considerable following away with them, but the greater number adhered to their original leader.

sometimes in barns, sometimes at market-crosses. There is some evidence to show that the arrangement of this mission, as it would now be called, rested mainly with Fox, and that the expenses of it and of the foreign missions were borne out of a common fund. Margaret Fell, the wife and afterwards the widow of Judge Fell-who subsequently married George Fox-opened her house at Swarthmore Hall, near Ulverston, to these preachers, and probably contributed largely to the common fund from which the expenses were paid. Fox's teaching was primarily a preaching of repentance; and he and his friends addressed vast. congregations much as Wesley and Whitefield did at a later date. But his teaching had certain marked peculiarities-especially his insistence on the universality and sufficiency of the light of God's Spirit. He regarded the work in which he was engaged as in no wise the founding of a new sect or society, but, to use his own words, as the appearance of the Lord's everlasting truth, and breaking forth again in His eternal power in this our day and age in England." Such teaching and such views necessarily brought Fox and his friends into direct conflict with all the religious bodies of England, and they were continually engaged in strife with the Presbyterian ministers who then filled the pulpits of English churches, with the Independents, with the Baptists, with the Episcopal Church, and with the wilder sectaries, like the Fifth Monarchy men, the Ranters, the Seekers, and the Muggletonians. This strife was conducted on both sides with a zeal and an acerbity of language not consonant with our present notions of decorum. The movement was accompanied, too, by most of those physical symptoms which usually go with vehement appeals to the conscience and the emotions of a rude multitude. The trembling amongst the listening crowd caused or confirmed the name of Quakers given to the body: men and women sometimes fell down and lay grovelling on the earth and struggling as if for life. But the Quaker preachers seem not to have encouraged these manifestations, but rather to have sought to assuage them by such reasonable means as carrying the affected to bed or administering a cordial

or medicine.

V

Some of the early Quakers indulged in eccentricities and extravagances of no measured kind. Some travelled and preached naked or barefoot or dressed in sackcloth; others imitated the Hebrew prophets in the performance of symbolical acts of denunciation or warning; even the women in some cases distinguished themselves by the impropriety and folly of their conduct. In some cases religious excitement seems to have produced or been attended by insanity, and the aberrations of Naylor and Ibbit can only be attributed to that cause. For, though not altogether free from acts of fanaticism, the Quaker leaders discouraged and disowned the grosser acts of enthusiasm. The activity and zeal of the early Quakers were not confined to England; they passed into Scotland and Ireland. Fox and others travelled to America and the West Indian Islands; another reached Jerusalem, and testified against the superstition of the monks; Mary Fisher, "a religious maiden," visited Smyrna, the Morea, and the court of Mohammed IV. at Adrianople; others made their way to Rome; two women suffered imprisonment from the Inquisition in Malta; two men passed into Austria and Hungary; and William Penn, George Fox, and others preached Quakerism in Holland and Germany.

Robert BARCLAY (q.v.), a Scotsman of family, who had received a polite education, principally in France, joined the Quakers about 1666, and William PENN (q.v.) joined the body about two years later. The Quakers had always been active controversialists, and a great body of tracts and papers was issued by them; but hitherto they had not been of much account in a literary point of view. Now the writings of Barclay, especially his celebrated Apology for the True Christian Divinity (1675), published by him in Latin and English, and the works of William Penn (amongst which his No Cross no Crown was one of the best known) gave to the Quaker literature a more logical and a more scholarly aspect.

As early as 1652 meetings of the followers of Fox, calling themselves at first the Children of Light, gathered together in various places in England, and were soon established in considerable numbers. The meetings at Bristol were often attended by from three to four thousand people.

One peculiarity of the conduct of the Friends down to the Revolution of 1688, and more or less down to the present time, must not be overlooked. They were essentially non-political. They opposed the most dogged personal and individual resistance to what they thought wrong; but they never attempted by combination or otherwise to exert political influence. "Keep out of the powers of the earth" was Fox's exhortation; and, when in 1688 a discussion was introduced into the yearly gathering of the body on the choice of parliament men, Fox strenuously opposed the introduction of politics into the meetings of his followers.

During the whole time between the rise of the Quakers and the passing of the Toleration Act they were the objects of an almost continuous persecution, which they endured with extraordinary constancy and patience. In 1656 Fox computed that there were seldom less than a thousand in prison, and it has been asserted that between 1661 and 1697 13,562 Quakers were imprisoned, 152 were transported, and 338 died in prison or of their wounds. Having come into being after the death of Charles I., the Quakers first endured persecution under the Parliament and then under Cromwell. In 1645 an ordinance of the Parliament had made the directory of the Westminster divines obligatory; and ordinances of the years 1646 and 1648 were passed for the preventing of blasphemies and heresics, which comprehended under these hard names some doctrines afterwards promulgated by the Quakers, as that the two sacraments of baptism and the Lord's supper are not commanded by the word of God, and that the use of arms for defence, be the cause ever so just, is unlawful. Furthermore these or other ordinances of the Parliament placed the decision of questions as to tithes in the hands of the justices of the peace. The instrument of government under which Cromwell assumed power as the Lord Protector had held out a promise of protection in the exercise of their religion to "such as professed faith in God by Jesus Christ" (art. 37); and the Protector himself, in a speech addressed to Parliament on the 12th September 1654, had declared liberty of conscience to be a natural right; nevertheless the Quakers found that they were still the subjects of bitter persecution. They were sometimes dealt with under the ordinances already referred to, sometimes as Sabbath-breakers because they

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