him of insuring his life; and he had only
just taken out his policy, when he fell ill of an acute disease which was
certain to end fatally in a very few days. The doctor,
half-hesitatingly, revealed to him his hopeless state. "By jingo!" cried
he, rousing up at once into the old energy, "I shall _do_ the insurance
company! I always was a lucky fellow!"

These men are keen and shrewd; faithful and persevering in following out
a good purpose, fell in tracking an evil one. They are not emotional;
they are not easily made into either friends or enemies; but once lovers
or haters, it is difficult to change their feeling. They are a powerful
race both in mind and body, both for good and for evil.

The woollen manufacture was introduced into this district in the days of
Edward III. It is traditionally said that a colony of Flemings came over
and settled in the West Riding to teach the inhabitants what to do with
their wool. The mixture of agricultural with manufacturing labour that
ensued and prevailed in the West Riding up to a very recent period,
sounds pleasant enough at this distance of time, when the classical
impression is left, and the details forgotten, or only brought to light
by those who explore the few remote parts of England where the custom
still lingers. The idea of the mistress and her maidens spinning at the
great wheels while the master was abroad ploughing his fields, or seeing
after his flocks on the purple moors, is very poetical to look back upon;
but when such life actually touches on our own days, and we can hear
particulars from the lips of those now living, there come out details of
coarseness--of the uncouthness of the rustic mingled with the sharpness
of the tradesman--of irregularity and fierce lawlessness--that rather mar
the vision of pastoral innocence and simplicity. Still, as it is the
exceptional and exaggerated characteristics of any period that leave the
most vivid memory behind them, it would be wrong, and in my opinion
faithless, to conclude that such and such forms of society and modes of
living were not best for the period when they prevailed, although the
abuses they may have led into, and the gradual progress of the world,
have made it well that such ways and manners should pass away for ever,
and as preposterous to attempt to return to them, as it would be for a
man to return to the clothes of his childhood.

The patent granted to Alderman Cockayne, and the further restrict