Annals of the Early Friends, By Frances Anne Budge. (S.
Harris and Co.)—The "Society of Friends," one of the most remarkable phenomena in the history.of the English people, has met with a very scant recognition in English literature. Certainly no other sect has had anything like the same influence on English life, religious, social, and political. But the great historian of the period in which the society was putting forth its strength, passes it by with a sneer at its founder's "crazy epistles." That the cause of this want of recognition is not the dullness and uneventfulness of the Society's history this volume abundantly proves. The short biographies of these "Early Friends" are very interesting and affecting, and tell the story of as remarkable a heroism and devotion as English men and women have ever exhibited. We would direct attention especially to the life of Mary Fisher, who, for one adventure, travelled alone through a great part of Turkey, in the seventeenth century, that she might deliver the word of the Lord to the Sultan, Mahommed IV., and succeeded at last in her aim, the Sultan receiving her courteously, and declaring that what she said was true.
Previous page
