ing to encourage an offer, and how to raise a feeling of self-respect in a lad, whom his fellows jeered at for his want of boisterousness; and, withal, how to play second to a girl less attractive than herself, in case she saw hopes of witnessing a wedding. But, when she began to know her own heart, (a knowledge in which the weaker sex greatly excel us,) she felt that in none of these was the mate for her.

And yet many of them were sharp-witted, strong men, weavers though most of them were; weavers, not in mills, but at home, or in roomy workshops, of some four looms each, with the windows open all day, and the shuttle flying backwards and forwards (why dont we say forwards and backwards?) and both arms and feet at work, and their tongues meanwhile not idle. And, when they crossed the threshold of their doors to walk out under the evening sun, after their day's work was done, or to fetch water at morning or noon, or to stand, with hands crossed over their breast, or in their breeches' pockets, at some corner which commanded a wide view, was it not a pure air which they breathed? And when they were boys, had they not all day long been driving the one helper of the family, a patient ass, to well and to coal-pit? It is not weaving, but mills and want of fresh air, that corrupt the blood, and develop and perpetuate scrofulous constitutions, the pest of manufacturing towns.

And so the young men of Eccleshill were healthy, and enjoyed rosy looks, and married (almost without an exception) lasses of their own village, and had four or five children in a family, and took the main part of their earnings for the common fund, and were shaved by the village barbers twice a week, (how their chins must have smarted!) and, if a murder or suicide occurred, took it quietly, and said little of what they thought, and read their Bibles and went to chapel (there was then no church in the place), and as they approached their first climactric, grew stout, and read the "Leeds Mercury," and spoke of the editor as Neddy Baines, and debated whether his leaders were common sense, or changeable as the wind; and, in other respects, emulated the medieval aspect of Romanesque saints, and were not, as Wesley said, a century, but about seventy years behind the age, just as Bradford is said to be thirty years behind it. I wonder what the age means.

It was, then, at Wrose, in the summer of 1845, that an episode in the life of pretty Ellen Oddy, formed the subject of conversation between a clergyman and the aforesaid weaver in a blue smock frock, called in the West Riding simply a "smock." This is partly open in front, buttons over the throat, has no "honeycombing" or chain stitch, as in the south, and reaches about to the hips. Under this, it is their fashion to wear a blue apron tied round the waist, and descending to the feet. A plain blue cap, of uncertain age, something like a Scotch "bonnet," (not a Glengary,) which is seldom off the head from morning till night, completed the costume (as visible in front) of the indigenous hand-loom weaver, a race which has already disappeared from the towns, and is threatened with extinction, even in those villages, where the celebrated Pogmoor dialect still diversifies the open-voweled English of the Riding. And such a blue cap was found to be of great use to the interlocutor of our story; not simply, as the white hat of that familiar embodiment of our youthful imaginings, the miller, to keep off cold, wind, and rain. Even I, who have not roughed it as many have, and who was called a delicate boy,-even I, have found pleasure and little harm, in

refreshing rains upon my head in October and November; and so have the scions of Christ's Hospital; from which it appears that hats, not to mention caps, are unnecessary simply as weather-shields; a conclusion which derives additional confirmation from the fact, that these robust village weavers retain the cap at their work indoors; just, in fact, as we did in our college rooms, when, after a heavy meat breakfast, we clustered round the fire or to the windows for chat, and not merely "sipped" the hot spiced beer, and grew redolent of Lopezes, Queens, and Havannahs. Indeed, my friend William Smith, who has been known to transform a single inhalation of smoke into seven fuliginous rings, of forms mysterious enough to suit the sponsals of a Scandinavian ally of the serpent Midgard, and who sailed thereon past the haven of a first class, into the gloom of the well-known gulf, I say, my friend William Smith has endeavoured to prove the superiority of hats to caps, in an essay too elaborate to be introduced in this place. Suffice it to say, that he entertains sentiments different from those of Ellen Oddy, whose lover-But, in short, the outline of his essay was somewhat as follows:

Varieties of hats in different countries, also of caps; limitation of the comparison to a modern broad-crowned English hat, and Scotch and English caps of all patterns.-Definition of the hat proper, and of the essentials of a cap.-The pòs ri, or grounds of comparison.-Rectification of a passage in the Analytics, where the phrase pòç ri has been misunderstood.-Necessity, utility, convenience, harmony with other dress. Intrinsic comeliness, antiquity, symbolism.-Argument from the material, the rí.-Hats and caps as connected with democratic revolutions. Argument from soldier's head-dress.-The college cap, part of the old monastic self-denial.-The turban; its origin, an invention of thieves. -Story of Thor and the Giant.-The feathers of the Red Man and the Court ladies.-Difficulty of the inquiry, since every fact admits of contradictory inferences.-Conclusion, which is evolved as by a chemical or galvanic process, from the amalgamation of all the arguments. Appendix, showing how the hat may be made to contain a faggot of inconsistencies.-Preface, which, as it is written last, should be placed at the end.

An idea of the general tenor of his argument may be formed, from the fact, that he derives the cap, not from the pileus of Ulysses in the painting of Nicomachus, but from the head-pads which must have been in use at the Tower of Babel; and looks on the petasus of Endymion, as the first memorial of a hat; whereupon he advances that the hat, being of more modern origin, must have been the supply of an acknowledged want, and, consequently, superior to the cap.

To return, however, the cap was found useful to one of the interlocutors; not, (as I have intimated already,) for the weather's sake; but because it formed a convenient cushion for the water tin, which, married man as he was, he still, from native gallantry, kept to his own hands, until a younger growth of hands should help him. But why cap, apron, and smock-frock were blue, it would be hard to say. No political prepossessions can be admitted as a sufficient account of the matter; for, independently of his own personal ignorance of, and indifference to politics in general, all weavers wore blue. Nor can I accept a suggestion of the necessities of his trade being concerned in the matter, for the cloth manufacture in those villages is as often white and black, as blue. But this is a digression.

The

Ellen Oddy, it was reported, had at length accepted a lover. moor had been enclosed. Stone walls abounded everywhere. Everybody felt cooped up; everyone felt as if the walls were watching them, and prohibiting freedom of tongue. Society was more artificial; the villagers had drawn some five or ten years nearer upon "the age." Formerly, it was right and wrong, and native instinct and sunny skies which had guided their sayings and doings; now, they felt the weight of an invisible, external, straitlaced propriety,-propriety, the incubus of all who are not poor enough, nor yet well-bred enough, to be natural. And no one appreciated this change with more sensitiveness than Ellen Oddy. It hardened her manner. Did it harden her heart? I think not. But so it was; a constant, visible, uneasy consciousness, that distinctions of rank in the village were becoming more numerous and more rigid, burdened her spirits. She felt that she had been Ellen Oddy, but was now only the carter's daughter. She imagined her sphere of life made narrower, and yet was often at a loss for the one line of duty which might render her way clear. She no longer felt able to stand alone; and sighed for a protector, whose will and counsel should extricate her from this perplexity, and direct and console her. And then, what if he should prove a drunkard or a man gossip? Certainly, times were altered. Instead of honest, merry greetings at the well, to which she could accord just as much encouragement as she wished, she heard the sound of footsteps near her father's cottage after nightfall, and would not, "after dark," go to the next neighbour's, but a "lad" who would not be said nay, sprang, as it were, out of the ground, to ask her to accept him as suitor. At length report said, that Ichabod Hardacre, a young plaisterer from the further end of the village, had made an impression on the lonely, unsettled heart of the maiden.

It might be highly entertaining to those who could follow it, to hear a love tale told in the broad home-thrusting dialect of the Riding. William Smith tells me of his having once been greeted by a young farmer, in whose field he was unwittingly trespassing, in words as follows:-"Theear's noa ro-ad thee-ar; hah wod ye like, if ah wor ta walk inta yahr parler wun o' thee-as dayas?" in plain English, "There's no road there; how would you like, if I were to walk into your parlour one of these days?" And this is highly characteristic. The genuine West Ridinger loses no time in putting you into his position and appealing directly to your sense of justice, in presuming you have made up your mind to do what he wishes you. There is a good deal of selfwill in this; but, at the same time, I am bound to say that, whilst the peasantry in the south conceal the self-will which they have, the Yorkshireman shows signs of more than often he is guilty of. The words "wilt thou be my dearie?" of the Scotch poet, will probably take the following form in this dialect::-"Nah, lass, thahll etta hev ma; thah knaws at ta likes ma." In plain English current of the realm; "Now, lass, you can't help having me, you know you like me." Strangers call it a barbarous dialect; the people of the place do not: and many a well-born gentleman regales himself by addressing the poor in their own tongue. It is superior to most of the south country dialects in this, that it has nothing nasal or dental, two of the most horrible offences that can be committed against a musical ear; Yorkshiremen are not afraid to open their mouths. Moreover, it is purer English than the Somersetshire and other dialects, for these reasons; first, it preserves

the consonantal form of words intact; secondly, almost all words of its own are of Saxon origin; thirdly, many of its provincial words and phrases are identical with those of our early poets, so much so, that scarcely an obsolete word or phrase of English origin in Shakspeare's dramas is unknown to the unlettered Pogmoorian; fourthly, the rules for translating English into Pogmoorian, are almost as simple as for translating common into Doric Greek; fifthly, the order of thought in the dialect is simple, and the result of reflection, beginning with the last idea; and the language, in which it is expressed, is, like John Bull, fearless and uncompromising.

By what means Ichabod Hardacre so softened this broad Doric, as to make it "the moving messenger of love," and how it was rendered musical to Ellen Oddy's ear, is not mine to explain. Indeed, I will not be answerable for the truth of the report. It may well be imagined that the belle of the village would be too closely watched by suitors, to allow of any supposed engagement remaining long a secret. And so, when once the whisper was heard, the name of Ichabod Hardacre stole through the village like wildfire, and envy and wonder were the portion of the lads, and joy of the lasses, who rightly judged, that Ellen Oddy's wedding would scatter over the face of society, a host of men with hearts yearning for an idol, and feelings too excited for them to be over-nice in their choice. A clergyman, then, was asking the truth of this report, at Wrose, in the summer of 1845, when the first-mentioned weaver replied, as the reader has already conjectured, "There's nothing in it"

BETTER THINGS.

DURING the time of the potato-famine in England, a young gentleman, the eldest grandson, now the eldest son, of an earl, was living in a country village, with his private tutor. He was eighteen years of age; and he had an allowance of fifty pounds per annum. He was intended, as many young aristocrats are, to be a Guardsman-and he is one now. But he was an earnest-minded, thoughtful young man, and he had begun already to think about other things than military mess-rooms, London clubs, operas, theatres, and "the hounds." He had heard that he belonged to the privileged classes, and he had asked himself what, rightly considered, the privileges of his order might be; and he answered that the greatest of all privileges was the privilege of doing good.

He then thought that he would try. He did try; and he found it easy and pleasant. "I have been astonished," he wrote, some time afterwards to a friend, "to find how easy it is to do good, if one is really in earnest." But he thought that there was "no time like the present," and he began at once. "We must not wait," he said, "till we are older, or marry and settle, or get into Parliament." So he began at eighteen to do what he could for the poor.

Perhaps, his private tutor helped him-perhaps he did not. Private tutors do not always think it necessary to educate the hearts as well as

the heads of their pupils. It is not in the bond. Indeed, they sometimes think it their duty to lecture on the subject of low pursuits and low companions, and to suggest that in the houses of the poor infectious diseases may be caught. "And then what would your father say to me?" Latin and Greek, and things of that kind, form the educational staple of young lordlings; it would be rank heresy to indoctrinate them with new-fangled ideas about the duties of the rich to the poor. If moral questions are raised, it is only orthodox that they should relate to the duties of the poor to the rich. How this may have been in the case of the young aristocrat of whom we are now speaking, we do not pretend to know; but if there was nothing done to educate his heart, it was so good an one that it wanted very little education, and soon began to discipline itself. And so, at eighteen, this young aristocrat, whilst undergoing the process of "coaching," in a country village, had been turning over in his mind whether existing institutions have a tendency to eradicate much evil,-whether the Poor-law works well,-whether educational and sanitary commissions have done much good,-whether emigration is beneficial-how steam-power affects the labour-market; and how it happens that gaols are so comfortable, and workhouses so disagreeable. All these things the young gentleman asked himself, and, perhaps, he asked his private tutor. But he had more immediate work on hand at that time. He foresaw that the failure of the potatocrop, and the enhanced price of bread, must greatly increase the sufferings of the poor, throughout the winter then coming on; and he began to concert measures for the prevention of the anticipated distress. The conduct generally of the wealthier classes, at this period, was in a high degree creditable to them. Their sympathies were really excited. A great deal of money was subscribed in a very quiet manner-a great deal of thought was given to the subject, and a great deal of activity was shewn in carrying out the decisions arrived at after this much thought; nay, more, many people, not much given to self-denial, really did, at this time, deny themselves for the benefit of others. What this young gentleman did, therefore, on this occasion, is principally remarkable, because it was done at a period of incipient adolescence, when grave matters of this kind do not ordinarily occupy the minds of young gentlemen of high rank and large expectations. A great number of soup-kitchens were established at this time-a great number of coalstores were opened; but we doubt whether more than one of each was presided over by the heir to an earldom at the age of eighteen.

It was, at all events, a good beginning. The young gentleman grew out of the leading-strings of the private tutor, and entered the Life Guards. Here was a chance for him to become a man of fashion after the most improved pattern. He had everything in his favour. All the legitimate temptations were besetting his path; and he might easily have so submitted himself to their guidance as to have left nothing to be desired by the fastest of all his fast friends about town. But the thoughts which had disquieted him in the country, followed him to the great teeming Babylon; and he could not get rid of them in the messroom of his crack regiment, or the bay-windows of his fashionable club. The subjects on which he meditated were not favourite topics of discourse among his ordinary companions; but he did not ponder them the less for that. He had made his election. He might be laughed at by some of his more thoughtless companions; but he had too much cour