and ecclesiastical polity, he wandered from place to place disputing with some and rebuking others. In 1647 he began to hold meetings, and astonished those who heard him by his earnestness and fluency of speech. The quiet pastoral regions of the Trent Valley and the Derbyshire hills formed the scene of his earliest labours, and here Quakerism may be said to have had its birth. At Nottingham, seeing the church upon a hill, he went there, and found, as he expressed it, that "the people looked like fallow ground, and the priest like a great lump of earth stood up in the pulpit above." He interrupted the preacher, and for doing so was cast into prison. On regaining his liberty he proceeded to Mansfield-Woodhouse, where he was again "moved to go into the steeple-house and declare the truth to the priest and people;" but the people fell upon him, put him in the stocks, and threatened him with "dog-whips and horse-whips." Continuing his itinerant ministry, we next find him at Derby, where, in accordance with his usual practice, he proceeded to church, and after the service stood up to address the people. For uttering "blasphemous opinions" he was taken to prison, and brought before Justice Bennett, whom he bade to "tremble at the word of the Lord," an expression which caused the magistrate to apply to him the term _Quaker_--a nickname that has ever since attached to his followers, who previously had designated themselves the "Children of Light." After these rough experiences he visited Yorkshire, traversed the picturesque Wensleydale, Grisedale, and Lunedale, and thence passed into Westmoreland. Here, on the high fells between Kendal and Sedbergh, he preached a sermon memorable in the annals of Quakerism. It was delivered from the summit of a weather-beaten rock adjoining the bleak moorland chapel of Firbank, whither a great company of zealous preachers and laymen had assembled from the surrounding district for a conference. Fox preached a sermon of three hours' duration, and with such earnestness that many of his hearers in their enthusiasm resolved to devote themselves to the work of promulgating his views. In all, it is said that about sixty energetic preachers formed the harvest of this northern mission, who traversed the country on foot, spreading the Quaker doctrines over the entire kingdom, many of them wearing out their lives in the hardships, privations, and persecutions they had to endure. Journeying southwards, Fox climbed to the top of Pendle Hill, which rises within the borders of Lancashire. "As we travelled," he says in his _Journal_, "we came near a very great hill, called Pendle Hill, and I was moved of the Lord to go up to the top of it, which I did with difficulty, it was so very steep and high. When I came to the top, I saw the sea bordering upon Lancashire. From the top of this hill the Lord let me see in what places He had a great people to be gathered. As I went down I found a spring of water in the side of