modation of those who
live in them, and to whom the surrounding estates belong. The land has
often been held by one family since the days of the Tudors; the owners
are, in fact, the remains of the old yeomanry--small squires--who are
rapidly becoming extinct as a class, from one of two causes. Either the
possessor falls into idle, drinking habits, and so is obliged eventually
to sell his property: or he finds, if more shrewd and adventurous, that
the "beck" running down the mountain-side, or the minerals beneath his
feet, can be turned into a new source of wealth; and leaving the old
plodding life of a landowner with small capital, he turns manufacturer,
or digs for coal, or quarries for stone.

Still there are those remaining of this class--dwellers in the lonely
houses far away in the upland districts--even at the present day, who
sufficiently indicate what strange eccentricity--what wild strength of
will--nay, even what unnatural power of crime was fostered by a mode of
living in which a man seldom met his fellows, and where public opinion
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