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ELIAS HICKS.

and knit the superior parts, and keep man or State vital and up-
right, as health keeps the body straight and blooming. Of
course a really grand and strong and beautiful character is prob-
ably to be slowly grown, and adjusted strictly with reference to
itself, its own personal and social sphere—with (paradox though
it may be) the clear understanding that the conventional theories
of life, worldly ambition, wealth, office, fame, &c., are essen-
tially but glittering mayas, delusions.

Doubtless the greatest scientists and theologians will some-
times find themselves saying, It isn't only those who know
most, who contribute most to God's glory. Doubtless these
very scientists at times stand with bared heads before the hum-
blest lives and personalities. For there is something greater (is
there not?) than all the science and poems of the world—above
all else, like the stars shining eternal—above Shakspere's plays,
or Concord philosophy, or art of Angelo or Raphael—something
that shines elusive, like beams of Hesperus at evening—high
above all the vaunted wealth and pride—prov'd by its practical
outcropping in life, each case after its own concomitants—the
intuitive blending of divine love and faith in a human emotional
character—blending for all, for the unlearn'd, the common, and
the poor.

I don't know in what book I once read, (possibly the remark
has been made in books, all ages,) that no life ever lived, even
the most uneventful, but, probed to its centre, would be found
in itself as subtle a drama as any that poets have ever sung, or
playwrights fabled. Often, too, in size and weight, that life
suppos'd obscure. For it isn't only the palpable stars; astrono-
mers say there are dark, or almost dark, unnotic'd orbs and suns,
(like the dusky companion of Sirius, seven times as large as our
own sun,) rolling through space, real and potent as any—perhaps
the most real and potent. Yet none recks of them. In the
bright lexicon we give the spreading heavens, they have not
even names. Amid ceaseless sophistications all times, the soul
would seem to glance yearningly around for such contrasts—such
cool, still offsets.

GEORGE FOX (AND SHAKSPERE.)

WHILE we are about it, we must almost inevitably go back to
the origin of the Society of which Elias Hicks has so far prov'd
to be the most mark'd individual result. We must revert to the
latter part of the 16th, and all, or nearly all of that 17th cen-
tury, crowded with so many important historical events, changes,
and personages. Throughout Europe, and especially in what we

ELIAS HICKS.

up to London, confers with the Protector, Cromwell,—is set at
liberty, and holds great meetings in London.

Thus going on, there is something in him that fascinates one
or two here, and three or four there, until gradually there were
others who went about in the same spirit, and by degrees the
Society of Friends took shape, and stood among the thousand
religious sects of the world. Women also catch the contagion,
and go round, often shamefully misused. By such contagion
these ministerings, by scores, almost hundreds of poor travelling
men and women, keep on year after year, through ridicule,
whipping, imprisonment, &c.—some of the Friend-ministers
emigrate to New England—where their treatment makes the
blackest part of the early annals of the New World. Some
were executed, others maim’d, par-burnt, and scourg’d—two
hundred die in prison—some on the gallows, or at the stake.

George Fox himself visited America, and found a refuge and
hearers, and preach’d many times on Long Island, New York
State. In the village of Oysterbay they will show you the rock
on which he stood, (1672,) addressing the multitude, in the
open air—thus rigidly following the fashion of apostolic times.—
(I have heard myself many reminiscences of him.) Flushing
also contains (or contain’d—I have seen them) memorials of
Fox, and his son, in two aged white-oak trees, that shaded him
while he bore his testimony to people gather’d in the highway.—
Yes, the American Quakers were much persecuted—almost as
much, by a sort of consent of all the other sects, as the Jews
were in Europe in the middle ages. In New England, the
cruelest laws were pass’d, and put in execution against them.
As said, some were whipt—women the same as men. Some had
their ears cut off—others their tongues pierc’d with hot irons—
others their faces branded. Worse still, a woman and three men
had been hang’d, (1660.)—Public opinion, and the statutes,
join’d together, in an odious union, Quakers, Baptists, Roman
Catholics and Witches.—Such a fragmentary sketch of George
Fox and his time—and the advent of ‘the Society of Friends’
in America.

Strange as it may sound, Shakspere and George Fox, (think
of them! compare them!) were born and bred of similar stock,
in much the same surroundings and station in life—from the
same England—and at a similar period. One to radiate all of
art’s, all literature’s splendor—a splendor so dazzling that he
himself is almost lost in it; and his contemporaries the same—
his fictitious Othello, Romeo, Hamlet, Lear, as real as any lords
of England or Europe then and there—more real to us, the mind