was only a distant and inarticulate echo of some clearer voice sounding
behind the sweeping horizon.

A solitary life cherishes mere fancies until they become manias. And the
powerful Yorkshire character, which was scarcely tamed into subjection by
all the contact it met with in "busy town or crowded mart," has before
now broken out into strange wilfulness in the remoter districts. A
singular account was recently given me of a landowner (living, it is
true, on the Lancashire side of the hills, but of the same blood and
nature as the dwellers on the other,) who was supposed to be in the
receipt of seven or eight hundred a year, and whose house bore marks of
handsome antiquity, as if his forefathers had been for a long time people
of consideration. My informant was struck with the appearance of the
place, and proposed to the countryman who was accompanying him, to go up
to it and take a nearer inspection. The reply was, "Yo'd better not;
he'd threap yo' down th' loan. He's let fly at some folk's legs, and let
shot lodge in 'em afore now, for going too near to his house." And
finding, on closer inquiry, that such was really the inhospitable custom
of this moorland squire, the gentleman gave up his purpose. I believe
that the savage yeoman is still living.

Another squire, of more distinguished family and larger property--one is
thence led to imagine of better education, but that does not always
follow--died at his house, not many miles from Haworth, only a few years
ago. His great amusement and occupation had been cock-fighting. When he
was confined to his chamber with what he knew would be his last illness,
he had his cocks brought up there, and watched the bloody battle from his
bed. As his mortal disease increased, and it became impossible for him
to turn so as to follow the combat, he had looking-glasses arranged in
such a manner, around and above him, as he lay, that he could still see