existing castle, however, so placed as to give protection to the shipping of its day; and a fastness of considerable celebrity in ancient story, did the county of Lancashire derive its name.

I do not know how Lancaster may look at all seasons; but I know how it looked on nearly the first spring morning of the present year. I had been directed to the Scotforth road (the name is suggestive), as presenting one of the finest views of the town; and I was not disappointed. Lord Bacon, it is said, delighted to expose himself bareheaded to the rain, avowing that he loved the spirit of nature to come over him. Since the invention of umbrellas, his taste in that respect seems to have grown obsolete. Wishing for the same thing, one would seek it now in another form, and would court the subtle essence rather in sunshine than in shower; and it is the early warmth of the year that seems best to realize it. The reader shall suppose this early spring. The hedges in their vernal beauty; the rivulet stealing down the gentle eminence "by its own sweet will," glittering and babbling in playful activity as it goes; the furze, gaudy with its rich golden blossom, yet furnishing a welcome ornament when there is not another flower within view; - let these be the foreground of my picture. The mid-ground is the valley of the Lune, stretching itself out in wide and varied luxuriance, while houses, gardens, mills, churches, trees, bridges and ships, define its course, till it pours its waters into the Irish sea, which is from this spot distinctly visible. Behind this, again, is the usually placid and unrippled bay of Morecamb, famous for those treacherous sands which have deluded and destroyed many a traveller; and further in the distance still, the eye rests on the Westmoreland mountains:

"Rocks, hills and crags, confusedly hurled,

The fragments of an earlier world,”

looking as if some pre-Adamite giants had been at play; or, as if there had been a thought of erecting some Titanic temple, which never proceeded further than the first excavations.

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In the midst of this wide-spread panorama stands, elevated on a considerable hiil, a mass of building, in such a position as that it seems the picture to which the landscape itself is but the frame, the Castle of Lancaster. Viewed from a distance, its aspect is extremely imposing. But a nearer view dispels nach of the illusion, and presents an uncomfortable piece of modern restoration. The save ningles with the gay. Gothic windows, brilliant with plate glass, force themselves on the eye in such situations as, in the original building, would have altogether destroyed its strength as a fortress. An old Roman tower, or that which is called such, has been cased over, to preserve it, upon no conceivable principle except that which dictated the conduct of the wife of the Vicar of Wakefield, when she gave a golden guinea to each of her daughters, with a strict charge that they were on no account to use it. The inhabitants of Lancaster have the satisfaction of knowing that the tower is there. The further advantage they derive from its possession is inconceivable. But, as we stand upon this Scotforth-road, these renovations are happily unseen, nor can we here perceive what “ thing of shreds and patches" the building has become. We gladly forget the mangled present, and throw ourselves on the past. Here, in the reign of Titus the Roman emperor, Julius Agricola formed a fortress, and sent hence the military stores requisite for the northern Roman stations. Here the Picts and Scots established themselves. Here Arthur, the king of the round table, conducted a successful siege against the Saxons, who, however, subsequently regained their fortress. The Danes afterwards invested the town, and committed great devastations on the surrounding country. Roger of Poitou, one of the retainers of the fierce "conqueror," ouilt the keep, and at last rebelled against his liege lord. King John was himself, at one period, lord of Lancaster, and its next possessor became one of the barons who wrested Magna Charta from the unwilling sovereign. One of his successors joined the ranks of Simon de Montfort, and was deprived of his possessions oy Henry III.; another headed the barons, who opposed Piers Gavestone and the Despensers. One of the Earls of Lancaster

was foremost in the battle of Poictiers, and entertained John, King of France, when brought over to England a prisoner. By marriage with the daughter of this noble, created by Edward III. Duke of

LANCASTER CASTLE. THE PRISON OF GEORGE FOX.

Lancaster, John of Gaunt became possessed of the castle and the title. He built the entrance towers, which rise up in such majestic grandeur before the eye. His son, Henry of Bolingbroke, was one of the most remarkable of England's constitutional kings. From that day Lancaster became an appanage of the crown. Edward IV. escaped hither from York. During the civil wars Lancaster was a strong refuge of the royalists. Cromwell, in person, besieged it. Bradshaw, at the time when he sat as judge upon Charles I., was sheriff of Lancashire. The pretender was proclaimed in the market-place of the town, when the Earl of Derwentwater headed his rebel army. Charles Edward passed hither on his way to England, and visited it again on his disastrous retreat. What spot has such an associated series of historical incidents? Familiar in its day with a state only second to that of royalty itself; mixed up with the successive crises of history, whether for evil or for

good; the fortress of liberty, the home of chivalry, the highway of armies, the scene of the most gorgeous hospitalities, who could have augured that its destiny would end in being what it now is, a debtor's prison?

Amidst the many purposes to which this fastness of “ time-honored Lancaster ". - if we may transfer the epithet from John of Gaunt to the place whence he derived his title has been applied, during the vicissitudes of its singular history, none, at the present moment, interests us more than its having been the prison of some of the martyrs of religious liberty. The founder of the castle in its present form, John of Gaunt, has been already mentioned as a temporary patron of England's first reformer, though he obeyed in this connection the promptings of ambition, rather than those of conscience. Our present reference to Lancaster is associated with a later period.

Among the sects which sprang up in England during the time of the great civil wars, scarcely any was more frequently mentioned than that of the "quakers." The term was one of reproach, said to have been first given to the body by some of the independents; but it covered with its contemptuous designation many men of large hearts, earnest zeal, and unquestionable integrity. Our object, in these pages, is not to advocate any definite form of religious opinion, but to endeavor to do some justice to all; and none but a prejudiced observer, looking on the personal and social virtues which the system called "quakerism" carries in its train, can fail to distinguish many points worthy of an emphatic commendation.

He would be a bold man who should assert that, in the early days of their history, the leaders of that body now called quakers never overran the bounds of prudence, or even of constitutional liberty. That they were men of the deepest religious sincerity must be apparent to the most superficial observer. It is also most evident that many of the convictions they strongly entertained were forced upon them by the irreligion, inconsistency and heartless formalism, of their times. The early Friends were as magnan

imous in avowing these convictions as they were earnest in adopting them. They were under the influence of an energy for truth so powerful as to out-run ordinary calculations. But, unless we were prepared to assert, not only that conscience is above all law, but that law has nothing to do with any form in which that conscience may assert itself, even when it interferes with the liberties of others, we must demur to some of their manifestations; nor, probably, will any modern follower of the tenets of the earlier Friends greatly differ from us in doing so. When, invading the quietude of churches, they debated before the assembled congregations the doctrines which the preacher had just delivered; or when they attacked, before his flock, the personal qualifications of their minister himself, they exceeded the bounds which the largest definition of religious liberty will allow. It was not, however, against such offences as these, considered in the light of misdemeanors, and justly noticeable as such, that the civil powers of that day exclusively or even mainly proceeded, but against the right they claimed to hold opinions not recognized by any existing system. Their refusal of oaths and tithes, their preaching in markets and other public places, their declining to take off their hats before magistrates, were their main offences, and for these they suffered severely. When they had increased so much as to hold assemblies of their own, -one of them being in a house known in after years by the name of the Bull and Mouth, Aldersgate-street, — they were often violently molested, under pretence of their being engaged in treasonable conspiracies, and an order against unlawful assemblies was especially directed against them. They justly accused the government of Cromwell of great inconsistency, in thus dealing with them, especially after his professions of liberty of conscience; and many were the appeals they addressed to him on the subject. There was justice in the complaint that, "although Archbishop Laud was beheaded, yet it could not be proved that the episcopalians had persecuted so severely as these pretended assertors of liberty of conscience had done, who, being got into possession of