and Griffith Gaunt he thought a production of very high merit. He was "hospitable to the thought" of all writers who were really in earnest, but at the first exhibition of floundering or inexactness he became an unbeliever. People with dislocated understandings he had no tolerance for.

by Sydney Smith, and Carlyle's French Revo- | ries he always spoke with warm commendation, lution. Of this latter Dickens said it was the book of all others which he read perpetually, and of which he never tired; the book which always appeared more imaginative in proportion to the fresh imagination he brought to it; a book for inexhaustibleness to be placed before every other book. When writing the Tale of Two Cities, he asked Carlyle if he might see one of the books to which he referred in his history; whereupon Carlyle packed up and sent down to Gad's Hill all his reference volumes, and Dickens read them faithfully. But the more he read the more he was astonished to find how the facts had passed through the alembic of Carlyle's brain and had come out and fitted themselves, each as a part of one great whole, making a compact result, indestructible and unrivalled; and he always found himself turning away from the books of reference, and reading with increased wonder this marvellous new growth. There were certain books particularly hateful to him, and of which he never spoke except in terms of most ludicrous raillery. Mr. Barlow, in Sandford and Merton, he said, was the favourite enemy of his boyhood, and his first experience of a bore. He had an almost supernatural hatred for Barlow, "because he was so very instructive, and always hinting doubts with regard to the veracity of Sinbad the Sailor, and had no belief whatever in The Wonderful Lamp or The Enchanted Horse." Dickens, rattling his mental cane over the head of Mr. Barlow, was as much better than any play as can be well imagined. He gloried in many of Hood's poems, especially in that biting Ode to Rae Wilson, and he would gesticulate with a fine fervour the lines

"... the hypocrites who ope Heaven's door
Obsequious to the sinful man of riches-
But put the wicked, naked, bare legged poor
In parish stocks instead of breeches,"

One of his favourite books was Pepys' Diary,
the curious discovery of the key to which, and
the odd characteristics of its writer, were a
never-failing source of interest and amusement
to him. The vision of Pepys hanging round
the door of the theatre, hoping for an invitation
to go in, not being able to keep away, in spite
of a promise he had made to himself that he
would spend no more money foolishly, delighted
him. Speaking one day of Gray, the author
of the Elegy, he said: "No poet ever came walk-
ing down to posterity with so small a book
under his arm." He preferred Smollett to
Fielding, putting Peregrine Pickle above Tom
Jones. Of the best novels by his contempora-

He was passionately fond of the theatre, loved the lights and music and flowers, and the happy faces of the audience. He was accustomed to say that his love of the theatre never failed, and, no matter how dull the play, he was always careful while he sat in the box to make no sound which could hurt the feelings of the actors, or show any lack of attention. His genuine enthusiasm for Mr. Fechter's acting was most interesting. He loved to describe seeing him first, quite by accident, in Paris, having strolled into a little theatre there one night. He was making love to a woman," Dickens said, "and he so elevated her as well as himself by the sentiment in which he enveloped her, that they trod in a purer ether, and in another sphere, quite lifted out of the present. By heavens!' I said to myself, 'a man who can do this can do anything. never saw two people more purely and instantly elevated by the power of love. The manner, also," he continued, "in which he presses the hem of the dress of Lucy, in the Bride of Lammermoor, is something wonderful. The man has genius in him which is unmistakable."

I

Life behind the scenes was always a fascinating study to Dickens. "One of the oddest sights a green-room can present," he said one day, "is when they are collecting children for a pantomime. For this purpose the prompter calls together all the women in the ballet, and begins giving out their names in order, while they press about him eager for the chance of increasing their poor pay by the extra pittance their children will receive. Mrs. Johnson, how many?' 'Two, sir.' 'What ages?' 'Seven and ten.' 'Mrs. B., how many?' and so on, until the required number is made up. The people who go upon the stage, however poor their pay or hard their lot, love it too well ever to adopt another vocation of their free-will. A mother will frequently be in the wardrobe, children in the pantomime, elder sisters in the ballet, &c."

Dickens' habits as a speaker differed from those of most orators. He gave no thought to the composition of the speech he was to make till the day before he was to deliver it. No matter whether the effort was to be a long or a short one, he never wrote down a word of what

THE LUDDITES.1

The Luddite rioters of Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire derived their name from General Lud, their mythical leader, that awe-striking name and title being, however, borne by several of their chiefs at different times and in different districts. The deplorable outrages committed by these men-t —the breaking into houses to seize fire-arms and obtain money for the purposes of their mischievous and dangerous association-lasted for nearly forty years, during which time, with the exception of a few lulls, the great manufacturing districts were in as disturbed and lawless a state as the Border country when such marauders as Hardriding Dick or William of Deloraine drove honest men's cattle, burned keep-towers, and harried farm-houses.

The

All social diseases have their climax. night, they say, is darkest just before daybreak. To miseries and misfortunes there is a culminating period. It was in 1812 that the Luddites were fiercest, maddest, and most desperate, deriding all philosophy and forgetting all the tenets of political economy in the fierceness of their indignation. Their object was to destroy the new frames which about the end of the last century were introduced ("with power") to finish woollen goods. Up to this time cloth had been finished by a tedious and costly process, a man being required to each machine, and three times the expense being incurred. The machine was a ponderous, unsightly instrument, square at the extremity of the blade, but otherwise not unlike the shears used by sheep-shearers. One blade was passed under the balk cloth to be finished, and the other over it, the latter cropping off the nap of the wool as the blades were dexterously pushed backwards and forwards by the workmen. The men engaged in this primitive occupation were known by the name of croppers. The process was as much behind the age as the Hottentot system of spinning is behind the latest processes of Manchester. The croppers, whose occupation was thus interfered with, became as violent as the silversmiths of Ephesus, and were the chief leaders in the Luddite riots. They were generally of the stubborn, resolute Yorkshire race; ignorant, violent, determined, holding together for good or ill, and resolved to destroy the new frames, which they believed would throw poor men out of work and starve their families.

No Ribbonmen ever banded together with more sullen determination in their movements; their drilling and their attacks were conducted with military precision. Mere agricultural labourers might have shown as much courage, but could not have formed such subtle combinations. Every man had his allotted place by number (as in a regiment) in the musket, pistol, or hatchet companies. The form of initiation was known by the technical name of "twisting in." The oath taken was as solemn and terrible as that used in the secret tribunals of the middle ages. It was as follows: "I,

of my own voluntary will, do declare and solemnly swear that I never will reveal to any person or persons under the canopy of heaven the names of the persons who compose this secret committee, their proceedings, meetings, places of abode, dress, features, connections, or anything else that might lead to a discovery of the same either by word, or deed, or sign, under the penalty of being sent out of the world by the first brother who shall meet me, and my name and character blotted out of existence, and never to be remembered but with contempt and abhorrence; and I further now do swear, that I will use my best endeavours to punish by death any traitor or traitors, should any rise up amongst us, whereever I can find him or them; and though he should fly to the verge of nature, I will pursue him with unceasing vengeance. So help me God, and bless me to keep this my oath inviolable."

At the time of the crisis of disorder in 1812, when the Luddite conspiracy was netting over the greater part of two counties, Enoch and James Taylor constructed the obnoxious frames in their smithy, which stood on what is now the playground of the town-school at Marsden. These enterprising men had begun life as common blacksmiths, but by industry, perseverance, and inventive genius, had become known as skilful machine-makers. The giant hammer used in the Yorkshire smithies was in 1812 playfully known among the grimy artisans who wielded it as "ENOCH;" and when the Luddites made one of their midnight marches to destroy a finishing-frame, the cant saying was-alluding to the firm at Marsden and the hammer that was to crush their work

"Enoch made them, and Enoch shall break them."

Suffering, and believing that they would suffer more, these impetuous men totally forgot that all improvements in a trade tend to

1 From Old Stories Re-Told, by Walter Thornbury, enlarge that trade; that all lessenings of cost

author of Haunted London, &c. Chapman & Hall.

in the production of a fabric tend to increase

the sale of that fabric; and that, if the finish- | food-riots at Sheffield, Mansfield, and Macclesing-machines reduced the number of croppers, field. Food-riots are as certain a proof of the manufacture of them undoubtedly led to something wrong in the body politic, as certain the employment of more hammermen. To pustules are proofs of small-pox. The stockingthese truths they were indifferent; all they weavers in Nottinghamshire began the bad knew was, that the new frames lessened the work by holding nocturnal meetings, by formimmediate work for the croppers, and they ing secret societies, by appointing delegates were determined not merely to destroy those and local "centres," by extracting black-mail frames already in use, but to terrify employers from manufacturers, and requiring implicit from further adopting them. obedience in their adherents, after administering an oath. From shattering frames, the Yorkshire men began to talk of upsetting the government. Religion was even pressed into the rioters' service, and a crusading spirit inculcated on those who joined the Luddites. The disorders came to a head in 1812, partly from the lenity shown to Luddite prisoners at the Nottingham assizes in March, and more especially by the dreadful price which provisions had then reached. The poor hardly ever tasted nourishing, flesh-making wheaten bread; tea and coffee were almost unknown; clothing was extravagantly dear; and the workman had to gain strength for the twelve hours' toil in the bad atmosphere of a mill from a paltry meal of porridge. All this was hard to bear even with freedom; but it was intolerable in a country where the intellect and conscience of the nation were enslaved, and where the poor had no other privilege than that of paying an undue share of the taxes levied on them by an enormously wealthy and tolerably selfish landed interest.

Yet the croppers themselves, as long as they could get work, were well-to-do men, their wages being twenty-four shillings a week. The Marsden people were, indeed, seldom in distress, for the great cotton trade was already developing, and warp and weft ready for the hand-loom were brought from Lancashire fortnightly and put out to Marsden weavers. But let us be just; the times were hard everywhere, and a shilling did not bring then what it had brought before, and what it brings now. Men worked week in and week out, and only just, after all, kept the wolf from the door. Oh! there was a sharp biting suffering before thoughtful working men could combine in that thirty years' conspiracy that brought many brave lads to the gallows, and sent so many to pine away the rest of their miserable and wasted lives in the dismal restrictions of New South Wales. Time is full of common sense; it brings men to the truth; yet for nearly a whole generation it never stopped these disturbances, erroneous as they were. The man who thinks that these troubles indicated no foregone misery and wrong, would call a dying man's groans and screams mere practical jokes,

The riots soon overran the West Riding, beginning at Marsden. After trying their destructive powers on a small scale there, the frames at Woodbottom and Ottiwells were The Yorkshire nature is stanch and dogged; marked out for destruction, and the lives of it was not going to bear starvation quietly, their owners, the Armitages and the Horsfalls, while proud, arrogant, and often cruel manu- were threatened. These gentlemen took prompt facturers were fattening on the very flesh and and energetic measures for the protection of blood of the workman and his pining children. their property. A bridge over the river at the The poor man had borne the contemptuous Woodbottom Mill had an iron gate placed denial of his rights, the incessant suspension across the centre which could be securely of the laws of the land, trade monopolies, fastened against all invaders. It had iron tyrannical, stupid, and heartless governments, spikes at the top, and a row of iron spikes civil and religious disabilities, and unjust and down each side. This bridge-with its gateuseless wars; but dear bread-that was the way and protecting spikes-remained in its last straw that broke the camel's back. The original integrity until a very recent day. artisan saw only in the new machinery means "At Ottiwells," adds a local authority, "at to still further enrich his oppressors and starve the upper end of the road fronting the mill, ` himself. When the rich man can be weary of and on an elevation, level with the present life, is it to be wondered at that the poor man dam, a cannon was planted behind a wall finds life sometimes intolerable? The panacea pierced with openings three feet high and ten seemed to be combination. General Lud got inches wide. Through these apertures the recruits in Derbyshire, Lancashire, Cheshire, cannon could be pointed so as to command the Nottinghamshire, and especially in the south-entire frontage of the mill, and fired upon an western districts of Yorkshire. There were

approaching enemy. This somewhat primitive