Rankin. Revenge is very sweet, I know, particularly for such wrong as you have suffered; but personal revenge is sure to come sooner or later. Take care that you do not mar the great public undertaking in which we are embarked by a too rash anxiety to secure for a private triumph what cannot escape you. You must give me your promise that the men shall offer no injury either to person or to property, unless their laudable purpose be interrupted. What we desire to effect now is, simply to seize the recorder, to put him into his carriage without hurting a hair of his head, to march with him on the road to London as far as Welverton gate, and to tell him when we get there that if he value his neck he will never shew himself in Coketown again. Are your people sufficiently under control to do this, and no more ?"

"They are up to any thing or every thing. They will do this, certainly. But what if the corporation or the Tories should resist ?"

"Even then we must exert ourselves to prevent an outburst. What should we gain by it? Coketown might be sacked and burnt, or Welverton plundered; but we should lose far more in character than we gained in strength. No; it is by a calm display of moral power even more decisive than that which was exhibited on the day of our last meeting-that we can hope to prevail. Resistance, such as the corporation and the Tories combined could offer, we should sweep aside as we would a gossamer, only let us not give a handle to those who would charge us with a thirst of mere plunder, when our glorious ambition tends to the regeneration of our country."

66

Ay, and to the punishment of the villains who break in upon the peace of our homes; and believe, because we are poor, that we cannot feel like men."

"Surely, surely; in good time. Meanwhile you have three days to prepare. Go, my good Rankin, round all the district. Let each leader know what is expected of him; and come in the same style that marked your arrival last week, that we may give the recorder the sort of welcome he deserves. If a convenient oppor

tunity offer, then, indeed, you may take advantage of it; but, as you desire the ultimate success of the cause, be cautious."

The old man promised caution, but it was in a tone which contradicted the words as they were spoken. Mr. Beaver, however, seemed satisfied; and after resting about an hour, during which other plans were digested, with the detail of which we need not trouble the reader, he prepared to take his leave. Rankin conducted him to the outer door, and closed it after him. But Beaver had scarcely crossed the mound, and reached the nearest of the ash-trees, when his name, pronounced in the soft tones of a woman's voice, arrested him He turned round; and though his powers of vision were impaired by so sudden a transition from light to darkness, he had no difficulty whatever in recognising the speaker.

"Isabel, is it you? What brings you out at so late an hour?" cried he.

"Do you think I could stay within, knowing that you were here; and that, if I did not meet you thus, I should not meet you at all? Oh, me! it is not so often that you visit us now. You are weary of us, John, and of your poor Isabel in particular."

"Nay, now, Isabel, you wrong me. You know that you do. I have been overwhelmed of late with public business, to such a degree that I have not been able to think of any thing besides. I am not weary of you, Isabel; I never can be."

“Ah, that is kindly said, John; and fain enough am I to believe it. But there was a time when nothing would have kept you for three days together from the moor. Besides, I used to share your anxieties, as well as your brighter hopes, once upon a time; and now you tell me that you do not come because business overwhelms you."

"My dear Isabel, you really must exercise both patience and self-control. A great crisis is at hand; and if you weaken me by calling my softer feelings into play, total ruin will follow. Be content, sweet girl. You have given me too many proofs of devoted affection to permit my heart's estranging itself from you, even for a moment. But there are duties which I owe to others, as well as to you and to myself. It is for

our country, dear Isabel, that we must make the sacrifice. Surely, you have not ceased to be the patriot since you became"

"Fallen in mine own eyes, John!" exclaimed the poor girl; "and in yours too: for never, never is woman frail that she does not sooner or later lose the esteem even of him for whom she may have sacrificed all. Oh, John, do not cease to love me! Become as great as you will, as renowned, as much mixed up with the great business of life, but remember -oh! remember that there is one lowly heart which beats only for you, and must cease to beat whenever you fling its devotion from you. Oh, John, do not cease to love me!"

"Nay, nay, Isabel," replied he, while at the same time he folded the trembling girl in his arms, "this is not worthy either of me or of yourself. Cease to love you! Have I not proved to you that such an event is impossible? Go to bed. Go and dream of the speedy arrival of the hour which will enable me to convince even your incredulity of the place which you hold, and have ever held since I first met you, in my devotions. Good night, mine own Isabel. If you love me, suffer not these idle fantasies to gain the mastery over you. All will be explained and put to rights by and by."

"But will you come again soon, and spend long hours with me, as you once did?"

"Doubt it not, sweet Isabel. Believe me, I am quite as anxious to live those blessed hours over again as you can be. Whenever I escape from the affairs which now harass me to death, shall I not turn to you for my reward? Therefore good night, dear love; and let us both look forward with hope, if not with joy, to what the future shall bring forth."

Poor Isabel! either she was comforted, or she seemed to be so, by the words and manner of her lover. She hung about his neck for a moment, kissed him tenderly; and then, falling back from his embrace, darted aside, as if by a sudden effort, and ran towards the house. On the other hand, Beaver stood still a brief space on the spot, after which he proceeded on, not triumphantly, it must be confessed-for though a scoundrel, he was yet a man- yet

little disposed to regret, at least after the lapse of a few seconds, that the interview with Isabel was over. What was his connexion with that girl? In few words, it was this.

I do not know how far the reader of these pages may be acquainted with the peculiar habits, both of thought and of action, which distinguish the miners of the northern counties from all other classes of the

English sovereign's subjects. Having as little in common with the elever, yet base-minded, operative, as he has with the dull, honest, pigheaded agricultural labourer, the miner, as he lives in a world which is peculiar to himself, so is the whole frame and texture of his moral and intellectual being distinct and apart from that of the inhabitant of the upper air. The miner is not always an educated man; that is to say, he is often ignorant of the arts of reading and writing. The miner has little intercourse with society; because, except when he returns, once a-week, to the earth's surface, he is cut off from the conversation even of his own family. And the consequence is that the miner, more than any other human being of his rank and social condition, lives and moves, from morning even till night, under the dominion of a fearfully active imagination. I use this form of speech, because imagination in his case clothes itself uniformly in the darkest habiliments. Is the miner disposed to become religious? will not listen to the exhortations of the Churchman, or even of the Wesleyan. They are both too gentle, too humane, too generous, and kind, and placable in their creeds for him. But let the true disciple of Calvin make his appeals to him, or the Baptist, or the Teacher of the Tongues, or any body else who shall speak of irresistible decrees, and particular reprobations, and mysterious impulses for which there is no accounting, there is not one of all these who will not be listened to greedily, or who will fail to carry a whole host of enthusiastic converts after him. In like manner, the politician who enlarges most upon the grievances to which the mass of mankind seem to be liable, and has the art to set them in array against the will of God, as revealed in the Scriptures of the

He

New Testament, may count with certainty on working up his audience to almost any pitch of daring. For the miner is not, like the fœtid creature of Birmingham and Manchester, naturally an irreligious animal. However prone he may be to mistake the true end for which religion was given, he has the principle of religion within him. But then this very bent of his-the disposition to think, without the power of regulating thought when it arises, or leading it to just conclusions, lays him especially open to the mischievous efforts of all who work for their own good, as they absurdly suppose, through the weaknesses and the follies of others. consequence is, that even as Whitfield made more proselytes in the mines than any where else, so the sophistry which the first French Revolution sent forth found in the bowels of the earth not only willing but devoted followers, who, adopting their opinions on political subjects, though generally resisting them on the subject of religion, sowed in their own minds a seed of discontent which has, we believe, continued ever since to bring forth abundant fruit, and to ripen.

The

Generally speaking, the miners are not educated men. Such of them as superadd the accomplishments of reading, writing, and accounts, to the acquirements peculiar to their calling, never fail of getting on in the world. The heads of gangs, for example, are comparatively well-paid persons. The superintendants of mines are princes. All the miners inhabit, by proxy, villages or hamlets planted near the mouths of the pits, that is to say, their wives and little ones, whom they rejoin every Saturday afternoon, occupy these dwellings, and seem to be very comfortable there. But the superintendants are still better off; for, like the stewards of estates, they usually have assigned to them either habitations built on purpose, or old manorhouses, the external appearance of which gives them a distinct place in their own society. Joseph Rankin, the individual to whom our readers have lately been introduced, was one of this class of persons. Possessed of strong common sense, and great firmness of character, he was likewise the slave of feelings that were

too strong for both,-of feelings with which no principle less potent than that of religion itself might hope to contend. Unfortunately for himself, however, Rankin had been educated in the strictest sect of the Whitfieldites. His religion, therefore, so far from teaching him to regulate his imagination, and repress his impulses, had no other tendency than that of ministering to both; and hence, though it did him little harm so long as things went in other respects well, it laid up no resources against the evil hour which few men may hope to turn aside for ever. Rankin, like all others of his order who have themselves received an education, was particularly desirous that his children should be well educated likewise. He had married the daughter of a yeoman, who had brought him some money, by which means, as well as by reason of his excellent pay, he was able to indulge this wish entirely. And so his two daughters-for he had no other children-Jane and Isabel, were put to the best school of which Coketown could boast, and came forth from it almost more largely informed than their station in life rendered either necessary or desirable. Still no harm arose out of the circumstance, nor seemed to do so, while yet their mother lived. People said, indeed, that the Rankin girls dressed above their station; and that the elder one in particular, who was extremely beautiful, threw herself too much in the way of admiration generally, and in that of young Lord Welverton in particular. But though the young Oxford scholar was noted for his attention to the fair sex, still it was not till after Mrs. Rankin died that the breath of scandal affected her daughter; because never till then had her noble admirer ventured to establish a footing in The Jointure-house. But why go on with such details? Poor Jane trusted too much either to her own resolution or to her lover's honour. The consequences were not different from those which generally occur in like cases; and Mr. Beaver's intimacy in the family of the overseer began, when, as a practising surgeon, he was called in to attend the overseer's eldest daughter in the hour of her sorrow, and to bring her infant into the

world at the cost of its mother's life.

From the moment that old Rankin made the discovery of his daughter's backsliding, he became an altered man. One passion, that of hatred to the author of her wrong, seemed alone to take possession of his soul; and with it arose, of course, an unquenchable thirst of revenge. I need scarcely add, that neither propensity was by Mr. Beaver discouraged, or that the conferences of the two men, let them begin with what topic they might, uniformly ended in invectives against the aristocracy. Then followed, on Mr. Beaver's part, the artful insinuation into a mind thus weakened of all his own base and frightful principles. Rankin was led by degrees into the mazes of infidelity and the absurdities of Republicanism. He greedily listened to arguments in favour of the latter, because the object of his especial hate was a lord; and towards the former the guidance was by far too skilful not to succeed in the end. Yea, and more marvellous still, the refined and elevated dogmas of the Socialists met at The Jointure-house with a willing reception. The old man thought them a little extravagant when first broached; but then the Doctor had a happy knack in explaining the extravagancies away; while to the remaining daughter they seemed to express all that could be imagined of the unselfish and the noble in philosophy. Will any human being wonder when we state the results in a single sentence? Rankin was easily induced to become a tool in Mr. Beaver's hands;

and the miners took, in consequence, an active part in pushing the Reformbill through its various stages. For though the blight in Mr. Beaver's fortunes separated him for a while from his friends, the impression which he had made was by far too deep to be by any such contingency erased. And so when the sun shone again on his side of the hedge, and he burst forth as the very mainspring of a political party, the deference which he received from both father and child was extreme. To what purpose he applied his influence over the mind of Isabel I need not stop to explain. Her own words, poor girl! have done it for me; nor would any good arise were I to describe minutely the process by which so sad a result was brought about. But I am bound to state that she loved him with a species of idolatry, such as is never experienced except by women-themselves possessed of mind, as well as of deep and fine feeling-when they happen to fix their affections on one whom they regard as raised, in point of intellect, far above themselves. Let me, however, escape from discussions which can give no pleasure either to the reader or the writer. We live in a world of sin and of sorrow. Sin and sorrow must, therefore, enter into every work of him who undertakes, under whatever form, to hold human nature up for inspection. But there is no necessity for lingering over the former; the latter it is which points the moral, and to that we shall endeavour mainly to confine ourselves. So here I change the subject.