George Fox, the founder and first preacher of the Christian sect of Friends, or Quakers, was born at Drayton, Leicestershire, England, in 1624. He was bound by his father, who was a weaver, to a shoemaker and grazier; and the occupation of his youth was divided between shoemaking and the tending of sheep. He did not, however, long follow either of these occupations, as, in 1643, he began his wandering life; and, after retiring to solitude, and at other times frequenting the company of religious and devout persons, he became a public preacher in 1647 or 1648. In his pious zeal, Fox visited, not only England, Ireland, and Scotland, but he extended his travels to Holland and Germany, to the American colonies and the West India islands. He died in London, in 1690. His journal was printed in 1694, his epistles in 1698, his doctrinal pieces, about one hundred and fifty in number, in 1706. The name of quakers was first given to him and his followers, at Derby, in England. REV. JAMES NICHOL. James Nichol, of Traquair, Selkirkshire, Scotland, was the son of a shoemaker, and he also learned the same trade of his father, and continued to labor at it, in the summer vacations, after he had entered college. With the manners of a gentleman, Mr. Nichol possessed uncommon talents. He was a most able and eloquent pulpit orator; an eminent scholar; and an acute, ingenious, and liberal theologian. In early life he published two or three volumes of poems, of considerable celebrity. He wrote several articles in one of the encyclopedias, and in various periodicals; and left a number of theological and literary works for publication. REV. WILLIAM HUNTINGTON. This late celebrated and popular preacher of Providence chapel, Gray’s Inn lane, London, worked for some time as a shoemaker, as he informs us, in his “Bank of Faith,” a work singularly curious and interesting. CHAPTER IX. CRISPIN ANECDOTES, ETC. Having given, in the preceding chapter, biographical sketches of some of the sons of St. Crispin, who have risen from the _last_, to the first rank among their fellow-men, in the several departments of knowledge, we shall conclude this work with a few anecdotes, and such matters as are of interest to the craft in general. * * * * * PATRON SAINTS OF THE SHOEMAKERS.--Crispin and Crispianus were brethren, born at Rome, from which city they travelled to Soissons, in France, for the purpose of propagating the Christian religion, A. D., 303; and in order that they might not be chargeable to others for their maintenance, they exercised the trade of shoemakers; but Rectionarius, governor of the town, discovering them to be Christians, condemned them to be beheaded; hence they became the tutelar saints of the shoemakers.