prehend people of
better quality and fashion. George Fox, born at Drayton, in Lancashire,
in 1624, was the founder of this sect. He was the son of a weaver, and
was himself bound apprentice to a shoemaker. Feeling a stronger
impulse towards spiritual contemplations than towards that mechanical
profession, he left his master, and went about the country clothed in
a leathern doublet, a dress which he long affected, as well for its
singularity as its cheapness. That he might wean himself from sublunary
objects, he broke off all connections with his friends and family,
and never dwelt a moment in one place; lest habit should beget new
connections, and depress the sublimity of his aerial meditations. He
frequently wandered into the woods, and passed whole days in hollow
trees without company, or any other amusement than his Bible. Having
reached that pitch of perfection as to need no other book, he soon
advanced to another state of spiritual progress, and began to pay
less regard even to that divine composition itself. His own breast, he
imagined, was full of the same inspiration which had guided the prophets
and apostles themselves; and by this inward light must every spiritual
obscurity be cleared, by this living spirit must the dead letter be
animated.

When he had been sufficiently consecrated in his own imagination, he
felt that the fumes of self-applause soon dissipate, if not continually
supplied by the admiration of others; and he began to seek proselytes.
Proselytes were easily gained, at a time when all men's affections were
turned towards religion, and when the most extravagant modes of it were
sure to be most popular. All the forms of ceremony, invented by pride
and ostentation, Fox and his disciples, from a superior pride and
ostentation, carefully rejected: even the ordinary rites of civility
were shunned, as the nourishment of carnal vanity and self-conceit. They
would bestow no titles, of distinction: the name of "friend" was the
only salutation, with which they indiscriminately accosted every one. To
no person would they make a bow, or move their hat, or give any signs
of reverence. Instead of that affected adulation introduced into modern
tongues, of speaking to individuals as if they were a multitude, they
returned to the simplicity of ancient languages; and "thou" and "thee"
were the only expressions which, on any consideration, they could be
brought to employ.

Dress too, a material circumstance, disti