ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 83 



borhood of 1600, by spontaneous generation, in an outburst of 

 spiritual development in England. It has now been shown, especi- 

 ally by the researches of Robert Barclay (not the old controversialist, 

 but a modern historian,) that the Quakers were by no means the 

 absolutely independent creation that they and others had supposed 

 them to be ; that they were derived from earlier existing denomina- 

 tions by a process which is strictly that of development. Their 

 especial ancestors, so to speak, Avere a division of the early Dutch 

 sect known as Mennonites. The Friends have undergone much 

 modification as to theological doctrine ; but some of their most pro- 

 nounced characteristics, such as the objection to war an oaths, and 

 even details of costume, and the silent grace before meals, remain 

 as proofs of Mennonite derivation. To find the Mennonites least 

 changed from their original condition is now less easy in their old- 

 homes in Europe than in their adopted homes in the United States 

 and Canada, whither they have migrated from time to time up till 

 quite recently in order to avoid being compelled to serve as soldiers. 

 They have long been a large and prosperous body back in Pennsyl- 

 vania. I went to see them; and they are a very striking instance 

 of permanency of institutions, where an institution or a state of 

 society can get into prosperous conditions in a secluded place, cut 

 off from easy access of the world. Among them are those who dis- 

 sent from modern alteration and changes by a fixed and unalterable 

 resolution that they will not wear buttons, but will fasten their coats 

 with hooks and eyes, as their forefathers did. And in this way 

 they show with what tenacity custom holds when it has become 

 matter of scrupple and religious sanction. Others have conformed 

 more and more to the world ; and most of these whom I have seen 

 "were gradually conforming \n their dress and habits, and showing 

 symptons of melting into the general population. But, in the mean 

 time, America does offer the spectacle of a phase of religious life, 

 which, though dwindling away in the old world region where it 

 arose, is quite well preserved in this newer country, for the edifica- 

 tion of students of culture. These people, who show such plain 

 traces of connection with the historical Anabaptists that they may 

 be taken as their living representatives, still commemorate in their 

 hymns their martyrs who fell in Switzerland for the Anabaptist faith. 

 There was given me only a few days ago a copy of an old, scarce 

 hymn-book, anterior to 1600, but still in use, in which is a hymn 

 commemorative of the martyr Haslibach, beheaded for refusing to 



