All this, however, is a deviation from our primary purpose, which was to laud and magnify the Brotherhood. We repeat that we loved them early, and also that we loved them long. It is true that some years ago a slight estrangement--the shadow of a summer cloud--disturbed the harmony which had previously existed between Maga and the Society of Friends. A gentleman of that persuasion had been lost somewhere upon the skirts of Helvellyn, and our guide and father, Christopher, in one of those sublime prose-poeans which have entranced and electrified the world, commemorated that apotheosis so touchingly, that the whole of Christendom was in tears. Unfortunately, some passing allusion to the garments of the defunct Obadiah, grated uncomfortably on the jealous ear of Darlington. An affecting picture of some ravens, digging their way through the folds of the double-milled kerseymere, was supposed to convey an occult imputation upon the cloth, and never, since then, have we stood quite clear in the eyes of the offended Conventicle. Still, that unhappy misunderstanding has by no means cooled our attachment. We honour and revere the Friends; and it was with sincere pleasure that we saw the excellent Joseph Pease take his seat and lift up his voice within the walls of Parliament. Had Pease stood alone, we should not now, in all human probability, have been writing on the subject of the game laws. We are, however, much afraid that a great change has taken place in the temper and disposition of the Society. Formerly a Quaker was considered most essentially a man of peace. He was reputed to abhor all strife and vain disputation--to be laconic and sparing in his speech--and to be absolutely crapulous with humanity. We would as soon have believed in the wrath of doves as in the existence of a cruel Quaker; nor would we, during the earlier portion of our life, have entrusted one of that denomination with the drowning of a superfluous kitten. Barring a little absurd punctilio in the matter of payment of their taxes--at all times, we allow, a remarkably unpleasant ceremony--the public conduct of our Friends was blameless. They seldom made their voices heard except in the honourable cause of the suffering or the oppressed; and with external politics they meddled not at all, seeing that their fundamental ideas of a social system differed radically from those entertained by the founders of the British constitution. Such, and so harmless, were the lives of our venerated Friends, until the demon of discord tempted them by a vision of the baleful hustings.