larger, numerically, than they were thirty years age. In the early
days of local Quakerism, the country rather than the town was its
favourite situation. Newton, Freckleton, Rawcliffe, and Chipping
contained respectively at one time many more Quakers than Preston,
but the old stations were gradually broken up, and Preston
eventually got the majority of their members. A building located
somewhere between Everton-gardens and Spring-gardens was first used
as a meeting-house by them. In 1784 a better place was erected by
the Friends, on a piece of land contiguous to and on the north side
of Friargate; and in 1847 it was rebuilt. Although no one was
officially engaged to map out the place, a good deal of learned
architectural gas was disengaged in its design and construction. It
was made three times larger than its congregational requirements--
the object being to accommodate those who might assemble at the
periodical district meetings. Special attention was also paid to the
loftiness of the building--to the height of its ceiling. One or two
of the amateur designers having a finger in the architectural pie
had serious notions as to the importance of air space. They had
studied the influence of oxygen and hydrogen, of nitrogen and
carbonic acid gas; they had read in scientific books that every
human being requires so many feet of breathing room; and after
deciding upon the number of worshippers which the meeting-house
should accommodate, they agreed to elevate its ceiling in the ratio
of their inspiring and expiring necessities. This was a very good,
salutary, Quakerly idea, and although it may have operated against
the internal appearance of the building it has guaranteed purity of
air to those attending it.

The meeting house is a quiet, secluded, well-made place; but it has
a poor entrance, which you would fancy led to nowhere. A stranger