own fault, to sever himself from the masters, and advocate freely the cause of the operatives.
Mr. Yorke’s family was the first and oldest in the district; and he, though not the wealthiest, was one of the most influential men. His education had been good; in his youth, before the French Revolution, he had travelled on the continent: he was an adept in the French and Italian languages. During a two years’ sojourn in Italy, he had collected many good paintings and tasteful rarities, with which his residence was now adorned. His manners, when he liked, were those of a finished gentleman of the old school; his conversation, when he was disposed to please, was singularly interesting and original; and if he usually expressed himself in the Yorkshire dialect, it was because he chose to do so, preferring his native Doric to a more refined vocabulary. “A Yorkshire burr,” he affirmed, “was as much better than a Cockney’s lisp, as a bull’s bellow than a ratton’s squeak.”
Mr. Yorke knew every one, and was known by every one for miles round, yet his intimate acquaintance were very few. Himself thoroughly original, he had no taste for what was ordinary: a racy, rough character, high or low, ever found acceptance with him; a refined, insipid personage, however exalted in station, was his aversion. He would spend an hour any time in talking freely with a shrewd workman of his own, or with some queer, sagacious old woman amongst his cottagers, when he would have
