This song was hailed with loud acclamations by the whole assembly; for, though somewhat prejudiced against the Roman, as they called him, and not altogether approving the colouring of his verse or the flow of his music, both of which they considered decidedly effeminate, the brutality of Folko had rendered them less impatient of the Provençal's sweetness; the sly cut at his unfortunate rival had extremely delighted them, and the intense admiration expressed for their princess entirely made up for all minor blemishes.

Alethè now retired for the night; and Sir Eustace, availing himself of the opportunity, came up to his rival, and again thanked him frankly and warmly for his service of the morning.

"Indeed," said he, "we all owe our lives to you."

"And the boar," uttered the deep voice.

Edred had now, however, become somewhat accustomed to its accents, and began to care little for them. He determined, therefore, to improve the present occasion to his own purposes; and, accordingly, ingratiated himself with Eustace, who, being of an open and generous disposition, entertained no suspicion of his rival's having any evil designs. Indeed, considering his youth, and the high character of all those with whom he had hitherto associated, suspicion would have ill become him. For suspicion arises either from the experience or the consciousness of wrong. "You have heard," said the elder of the two, "what strange chance brought me so opportunely to your rescue; I was in chase of a wild boar. May I ask you to allow me to-morrow to pursue the track from the point where I lost him, and to choose for yourself some other direction. You will pardon my anxiety on the subject, I know; it is natural that I should not like to be baulked of my prize. Should, however, either your party or that of the king fall in with him, I wish you all success.

Eustace assented at once, and expressed a wish to take the most easterly course, that he might become better acquainted with the paths in the direction of Schreckenstein. The king readily accorded the requests of the two young men, and decided himself on taking a more westerly route than any which had yet been chosen, that he might explore a tract of country hitherto undisturbed, and which, it was confidently asserted, abounded with game of every description.

And now the wine-flask and the ale-cup passed jovially round, and Sir Edred exerted his powers of pleasing to the uttermost; till every one agreed that the banquet suited him as well as the battle-field or the chase. The time passed on, indeed, so pleasantly, that they cheated the night of a full hour. At length the king rose, and the guests separated -Edred to contrive evil; Eustace to sleep deeply and calmly.

66

"He has fallen into the snare," muttered the Knight of Drontheim; ere noon to-morrow he will be in the power of one who never yet showed mercy; everything goes as I would wish it,-my rival destroyed, -my popularity established,-Alured's life saved,-and his daughter, from filial piety, to say nothing else, ready to give her hand to him who

rescued her father."

And, after a few more such meditations, he also fell asleep, to dream of the last day's exploits and the next day's expectations.

234

LIFE OF THE EDITOR OF A MANCHESTER NEWSPAPER.*

DR. WHITAKER, the learned but little enlightened historian of Manchester, has left us a picture of the domestic manners of the Mancunians, in which he represents a British maiden so constantly employing, in the gentle labours of the distaff, the many hours of leisure which the want of literary amusements must have left particularly vacant to the sex in all ages, that the spindle became the symbol of the sex. There is as great a difference between this picture and that given by one of the leaders of the so-called "Manchester school" of the present day, when, armed with a two-pronged weapon of flattery and corruption, he holds forth one broad sheet of the Times as more instructive than all the volumes of Thucydides, as there is between Dr. Whitaker's History and Mr. Archibald Prentice's "Historical Sketches and Personal Recollections of Manchester."

There is little doubt, as Dr. Whitaker would tell us, that there was a Man-cenion before there was a Man-cunium, a British stronghold in the wood before a Roman fortress; that the woods were cleared away before the town was built; that the chief of Manchester was an hereditary member of the British parliament, when parliament was an assembly of chieftains; that potteries preceded foundries, and distaffs the spinning-jenny; and that episcopacy, naturally settling at first in the capitals of the provinces, was not long in finding its way from the city of the Eboracensi to that of the Mancusians. But how long an interval of human progress lies between these dark epochs where Dr. Whitaker leaves his Manchester, and the first springing up of a constitutional society upon the dregs of the French republic, chronicled by Mr. Archibald Prentice as the opening of his historical era?-all the interval that makes the difference between a gradually-increasing population and a slowly-increasing civilisation, and a great and rapid-almost dangerous-impetus given to both by an unexampled skill and success in the arts of manufacture.

To trace the progress of the so-called "constitutional principle,” but in reality spirit of agitation; of reform, of amelioration sometimes, but still more frequently of class and factious gain, as in the instance of cheap bread to the manufacturing, to the eminent distress of the agricultural population; to the Corporation and Test Acts, the dissenting ministers' bill, orders in council, or any other order or enactment of the central authorities, as Mr. Archibald Prentice labours to do, is simply to ignore the great fact, that it is the nature of every man, not favoured with the good things of this world, to grumble, to agitate, to seek for vain and illusory ameliorations; and that when, as must inevitably be the case in great manufacturing districts, there is an overgrown population of hard-toiling, dissatisfied persons, the principle of movement and agitation must be expected to be more active, more incessant, and more clamorous than elsewhere.

In the present day, more than at any time, amid many inconsistencies

*Historical Sketches and Personal Recollections of Manchester, intended to illustrate the Progress of Public Opinion from 1792 to 1832. By Archibald Prentice. C. Gilpin.

and absurdities, often forced upon them by the pressure from without, which is inherent in such a state of society, still the small body of earnest, intelligent, and reflecting politicians who lead the Manchester school, and to whom we are mainly indebted for the yet imperfectly tried reforms of the commercial policy of the nation, exercise immense influence on the conduct and measures of government; and as they will, no doubt, never cease to toil in modifying the principles of taxation, so that industry shall not be oppressed, we have still to look forward to their exertions to even more important modifications in the internal administration of affairs, and to the removal of abuses prejudicial to the wellbeing of society and the progress of civilisation, but always with a view more particularly to the benefit of manufacturing interests.

Mr. Bright, referring the other evening to the principles of the "Manchester school," said that these principles were now adopted by many, who, previously to the success of the Corn-law agitation, and to the fulfilment of their predictions in matters of commercial policy, had believed them to be a most dangerous class of politicians-almost a treasonable set of men. Referring on this topic to Mr. Prentice's work, the honourable member said:

"Reading over the first few chapters of this book, we find that people who live now in Manchester are not at all of the same race as those who lived here in 1810. What was the Manchester Exchange then on a market day? It was not an assembly of rational beings, like the great majority of those who now assemble there; but the concourse was composed of a number of men who held principles of church ascendancy of a most furious and bigoted character. They were actuated by a sentiment of the most brutal and cruel nature, which they called loyalty. They were in favour of war to a degree which you would not expect to find among any tribe of savages; and it is more akin to the character of the jungle tiger than to that of an Englishman; and in their political partisanship they were so ferocious, that excellent, worthy, and intelligent men, who held opinions in favour of reform of any kind whatsoever, were, many of them, forced to leave the town, settling in other towns where political feeling did not run so high. And some men who have lived since to distinguish themselves above most men among whom they have lived, left this district and settled in the United States of America. From 1790 to 1820 may be considered the dark age of modern times. It was positively a reign of terror in Manchester; to be a dissenter was to be only some verminous animal, upon which high churchmen and the loyal and patriotic men who shouted

Britons never shall be slaves,

thought they might trample with impunity. To speak in favour of

* We are not going to venture into the troublous sea of politics, but we cannot help remarking that one of these absurdities of the Manchester school is, to propound that the aggressions of the Roman Catholics should be "let alone," because the Church of England is just as obnoxious to the "free inquirer." No one would for a moment venture to assert that the Romanists are not more given to ascendancy over intellect and conscience than the Protestants; and to protect and foster the one, merely because the other is disliked by the English dissenters, is like filling your garden with hedgehogs because you are inconvenienced by the rapacity of slugs.

reform of any kind, was to be prosecuted; and church-and-king mobs assembled with impunity, broke the windows of a liberal newspaper office, pelted the editor, demolished his property; and I think about 180 or 190 publicans in Manchester signed a solemn declaration that they would not have any of those pestilent reformers of any kind whatever in their tap-rooms or bar-parlours, and that they would not even sell them anything to drink, or give them any kind of entertainment whatsoever." Mr. Bright is certainly corroborated to a certain extent in his highlycoloured picture of the rude state of society in Manchester, at the commencement of the present century, by Mr. Prentice's narrative. But the formation of a "Church-and-King Club," the members of which wore uniforms, and whose standing toast, as long as they could stand, in their clubs and convivial meetings, was "Church and King, and down with the Rump," was met by a "Manchester Constitutional Society," of which Lloyd, Walker, Cooper, Sir George Philips, and T. Kershaw, were members; and Wheeler's Chronicle and Harrop's Mercury were soon opposed by the Manchester Herald, which, says Mr. Prentice, "continued spiritedly to advocate liberal principles, till judge-made law and mob lawlessness put it down, in March, 1793." Trees, not of liberty, but of loyalty, were borne about triumphantly; and inscriptions decorated the taverns, announcing that no Jacobins were admitted there. "They valued," says Mr. Prentice, "the custom of the jovial church-and-king men more than that of men who met to talk rather than to drink!"

There were one hundred and eighty-six places of public concourse, into any one of which had a reformer or a friend of peace intruded himself, he would have been regarded as belonging to "a well-known set of daring miscreants," whom grossly to insult or assault would only be a proof of loyalty, religion, and manhood. There were then no neutral news-rooms, no Royal or Mechanics' Institutions, no Lyceums, no Athenæums. Even in the assemblies for music and dancing the "Jacobin" and his wife and daughters were liable to insult and vulgar abuse. The reformers were excluded from all society but that around their own firesides, and even there they had carefully to guard against the introduction of the insidious spy; and in business transactions, none who could help it would deal with them. Throughout Lancashire the same coarse manners and intolerant spirit prevailed, though in different degrees. At Liverpool, comparatively refined Liverpool, about a dozen gentlemen, amongst whom were William Roscoe, Dr. Currie, and the Rev. William Shepherd, had been in the habit of meeting once a fortnight for literary discussion. Even this peaceful and unoffending company," says Roscoe's biographer, "was not exempt from the violence of party feeling."

Throughout Mr. Prentice would have us believe that the bigoted party, as he calls them, were also the most thirsty; but Lancashire legends, as transmitted to us by the author of "Passages in the Life of a Radical," by Elijah Ridings, and still more recently by the humorous author of "The Ghost of Tim Bobbin,”* would have us believe that the notable poet and radical schoolmaster of Milnrow was not only, like Burns, addicted to social enjoyments during lifetime, but that his thirst was prolonged even to beyond the grave:

I brought him op o deep breawn jug

'At o gallon did contain;

An' he took it at one blessed draught,

An' laid him deawn again.

The Ghost of Tim Bobbin. A Tale in Rhyme, for Christmas-time. Abel Heywood, Manchester.

Mr. Wheeler has recorded, in his "History of Manchester," proofs of the "patriotism" of that city at the commencement of the war with France; but Mr. Prentice, who dwells with gusto only on the dark side of the picture, the disquietude produced by commercial distress, and popular discontent brought about by want and dearness, looks upon the same period with unmitigated horror, as one of "war fever" and "political insanity." "Pugnacity," as Mr. Prentice designates the spirit of selfdefence and the love of the altar and the hearth, "called itself patriotism, and took its full swing, persecuting the lovers of peace as if the love of peace were a crime." The working classes, little accustomed to make sacrifices for the general welfare, which is with them an abstract idea of patriotism, naturally soon grew discontented with war expenses and war prices, and held a great meeting on the 24th of May, in St. George's Fields, for the sage purpose of fixing a minimum rate of wages; and it is to this meeting, and the prosecution of Colonel Hanson, that resulted from it, that Mr. Prentice traces the origin of that bitter feeling of employed against employers, which was manifested in 1812, 1817, 1819, and 1826, and continues, though divested of much of its virulence, to the present day. Thus it has happened that, from a most mistaken notion of the relations of the employer and the employed from the period of the war till the passing of the Reform Bill, Manchester continued to be ever the centre of wide-spread and deeply-ramified social disorganisation. Mr. Prentice says, that the working classes had been alienated from the government not less by their sufferings than by indifference to their complaints, and the harsh treatment of those who befriended them in their adversity. But the fact is, that there was a variety of causes in operation to perpetuate agitation in so favourable a field, amongst which the hydra-headed crop of "world regenerators," ever busy in a crowd, were not the least efficient.

The dissenting ministers' bill was a cause rife with vexation, but the high price of food, want, and general distress, were far more effective with the masses; a fierce and bitter spirit soon manifested itself against employers; and the riots, called Luddite, from an imaginary leader, Captain or King Ludd, disturbed, for a time, the tranquillity of most of the manufacturing districts. The Manchester Exchange riot in 1812, and the fatal conflict at Middleton, appear to have been among the most serious of these early demonstrations which led the way to the notorious meeting of the 16th of August, 1819.

The arch-enemy of the democrats, during this long and eventful period of time, was one Nadin, deputy-constable of Manchester, who arrested sometimes (as in the case of the meeting at the Prince Regent's Arms, Ancoats, on the 11th of June, 1816) thirty-eight radicals at a time, effecting these wholesale arrests with only six or eight police-officers, all of whom were, however, well armed with staves, pistols, and blunderbusses:

Nadin is thus described by Bamford:-"He was, I should suppose, about six feet one inch in height, with an uncommon breadth and solidity of frame. He was also, as well as he was strongly built, upright in gait and active in motion. His head was full sized, his complexion sallow, his hair dark and slightly grey; his features were broad and non-intellectual, his language coarse and illiterate, and his manner rude and overbearing to equals or inferiors." The radical poet, who seems, after all, to have had no dislike to this rough deputy, gives a specimen of his conversation on their way to the New Bailey Prison in Manchester: