Prussian officers of the regiment were ended at last in September by the disbanding of the Irish Regiment. The officers retired on half-pay, but not all were unmolested in the enjoyment of it. Allen was arrested by order of the Duke of Feltre, again Minister of War, and ordered to quit France without delay; and only Arthur O'Connor's intercession availed to save him from this second banishment. Jackson, another of the fighting captains, was less lucky, and suffered the same sentence without reprieve. He sailed from Havre to South America, whither more than one of these soldiers of fortune were forced to carry their swords. Town and Lawless, two other captains, were also exiled. In 1817 Byrne himself received a sudden order to quit France in fifteen days.

He and Ware,ong with Allen and Hayne, had settled down at Tours, as a little half-pay colony of v terans in the prime of life; and here the bomb fell on him. Luckily, the general in command at Tours was able to give him an introduction to the Prince de Broglie, and through this influence he obtained sight of the charge sheet, where he was described as 'Buonapartiste enragé qui ne changerait jamais.' Luckily for him, the Duke of Feltre's star was on the wane, and after four months spent in Paris, by De Broglie's advice (in defiance of the order), he was formally reinstated on half-pay, and so remained till 1828. In that year a proposal was made to employ him and Colonel Corbet, another of the expatriated Irish, in the campaign for the liberation of Greece. Singularly enough, the English ambassador, Sir Charles Stuart, protested, and the Irish soldiers had to be hurried off to join the staff of General Maison before matters could go further. After assisting at the siege of the castle of Morea, Byrne was put in command of this important place. He was at Navarino when news arrived of the revolution of July 1830, and here he received his commission as chef de bataillon in the 56th Regiment of the line. With this regiment he saw something of civil war against the partisans of the Duchesse de Berri; but when France settled down peaceably under Louis Philippe he took his retirement in 1835, and made, among other friendships, a close alliance with M. Viaris, the father-in-law of Tourguenieff. His sober and healthy life lasted on till 1862, when a very singular link with the past was broken by his death.

STEPHEN GWYNN.

369

SOME DIVERSIONS OF AN INDUSTRIAL TOWN.

It was before the worst days came to our little town, whose cluster of tall chimneys points upwards to a sombre sky, beneath fine curves of grey northern hills. Ten years ago there was still a busy click-clacking of home-looms up and down many a steep, narrow street where ever since the sound has been growing fainter and fainter-like a heart that is ceasing to beat, so one cannot but feel as one passes through them now. Japanese and Continental competition have gradually hushed that cheery humming, and the people are sighing for Mr. Chamberlain's millennium, not because they trouble over-much about economic theories and principles, but because it is absolutely a matter of life or death to one fastexpiring industry. A small industry it is, but one which used to bring good, clean work under healthy conditions for good wages to thousands of men and women, many of whom could work at home as well as in the mills, in roomy cottages, whose rent would represent an attic or a cellar in great cities. Is there a better philanthropy than to provide a community with the means of living cleanly, honestly, and comfortably by the fruit of their own steady labour? Surely not, but when an industry tends towards becoming a philanthropic enterprise its doom is pronounced, for sufficiently obvious reasons. Large issues, however, do not concern us here, nor would I attempt the elegy of quenched furnaces and rusting shuttles, though surely these possess a stern poetry of their own. I would rather recall merrier things, and above all certain large-hearted hospitalities of a peculiarly characteristic kind which marked the age of local prosperity and died hard with it.

Entertainments given by the richer to the poorer, the landlord to his tenants, the employer to the employed, are common enough everywhere, but it is, to say the least, unusual-at any rate south of the Trent-for such an invitation to be returned. This was sometimes the case, however, in prosperous days in the little north country town of which I write; and more whole-hearted hospitality it would be difficult to find than that of some hundreds of working people towards their guests of the evening. To be the principal guests of such an entertainment was indeed no light matter, for

VOL. XIX.-NO. 111, N.S.

24

the ordinary limits of time, physical capacity, and similar trifles were swept away by the zeal and energy with which the entertainers devoted themselves to the work in hand.

It was about the New Year (Christmas is decidedly at a discount in many northern manufacturing districts) that a large card arrived bearing an invitation to a festal gathering in a big public hall on a certain day. Soon after four o'clock accordingly, certain persons were ushered into a scene of revelry, where many long tables were spread for a substantial feast, and a gay multitude of rainbow blouses predominated largely over the more sober array of the other sex which was even then decidedly overmatched in the factories where it has now almost entirely yielded place to ours. The heads above the blouses have bristled for days and nights past with curling-pins, and are now borne proudly under the stiffest and crinkliest of haloes. The usual number of babies make themselves heard at intervals, and are treated alarmingly to snacks of currant bread and butter and drinks of tea.

The whole entertainment moves forward with that organised and melancholy precision which is so characteristic of northern working people. Nothing has been left to chance and nothing overlooked, as would be the case in any ordinary southern local gathering. Here an austere efficiency pervades even the entry of the tea-urns, immediately after the arrival of the guests, and the orderly marshalling of the company to many tables proceeds without any outward sign of hilarity or enthusiasm. It takes long, indeed, before the rigid faces relax at all from their normal expression of somewhat defiant reserve. At one table alone a giddier spirit immediately prevails, and sounds of unhallowed mirth break upon the rigidity of the atmosphere. It presents a curious spectacle.

Strong and stout, or thin and wrinkled, those grey-haired freelances, the old warpers and winders, have pursued their invariable holiday practice, and have chosen one elderly representative of the male sex to grace each side of their own special table. The amount of attention lavished upon those greatly daring individuals might have daunted feebler spirits. Still powerful elbows emphasise timehonoured jokes; on each side they are the mark for an artillery fire of well-seasoned pleasantries, indulgent gibes, and all the rough, homely witticisms of a generation which is now, alas! dropping out fast, and too often ending its days in the workhouse, owing to the changes which have gradually reduced their sphere of labour

almost to vanishing-point. The boisterous spirits of this older generation mark a gulf in manners between two social epochs. The self-contained young people at the other tables, still unthawed by tea-pots and currant delicacies, look coldly upon the revellers who possess so inexplicable an attraction for their guests. The contrast has a deep underlying significance. It really, I am convinced, marks a progress in gentler manners and even in higher aspirations; yet it was impossible not to turn with relief from a somewhat chilling decorum to the rude Doric mirth of those jovial grandmothers of our superior young women in the rainbow blouses.

Meanwhile tea has drawn to an end. Sampson, small of stature, wizened of countenance, with beady twinkling eyes, is released from the pressure of his numerous female admirers on either side. Sampson seldom relaxes into a smile, but his tongue is admitted to be a match even for the ancients of days amongst the warpers. Aaron, good-humoured giant, on the opposite side of the table, the special and cherished butt for their wit, rises carefully; an unwary movement on his part in those cramped quarters might send half a dozen of his oppressors flying. With the speedy disappearance of tables, a rising temperature, and an atmosphere in which fumes of tea, pork pies, orange peel, and hot humanity strive for the mastery, the chill of etiquette is less sensibly felt; spirits rise, and we settle down for the evening's entertainment opposite a raised stage in quite a hum of general conversation, while screws of paper containing sweets and other delicacies are brought out from the pockets of the younger girls and generously passed round.

The programme is long, very long. Whosoever-man or woman-has a song, must sing it. An excellent good songwould it were done!' is a sentiment which evidently has a tendency to grow general after the first hour or two. There are recitations, moreover, and here and there an aspiring male, discarding song or recitation, delivers himself of a speech. Good speeches they are for the most part, the average of public speaking being very high in north country industrial towns, astonishingly so when compared with the inarticulate habit of the daily life. But at last the chief performance of the evening sets in. Various properties are brought in and arranged upon the stage-a deal table covered with a blue and red cotton cloth, a chair or two, a stand with saucepans on one side helps to complete the scene; we soon realise that we are looking

at a farmhouse kitchen. An original drama is now unfolded, its authorship being wrapped in mystery. The stout farmer's wife appears with her fair daughter, who is left in charge of the house while the mother makes a distant expedition to the market in our town. She apparently addresses many injunctions to the maiden, mingled with certain warnings, not immediately comprehensible to the uninitiated spectator from the south (i.e. south of the Trent), but presently to become so. As a matter of fact, this conversation presents an interesting study in shades of local dialect, and of intonation which plays so large a part in dialect; for the mother speaks with the tongue of the farm-folk, a sparse population scattered in lonely farms about our bleak hills, while the daughter replies in the speech of the town mill-hand. Now, these people are two distinct species who seldom mingle at all, and have but a poor opinion of one another. An opportunity for such comparison between them is therefore rare and difficult to account for here, until it is ascertained on inquiry that the part of the mother is played by a weaver whose tastes led her away from her own people in the solitary little farm far away in the hills down to the sociable warmth and companionship of the factory, where labour is limited to working hours, and the everlasting requirements of live stock and dairy are not perpetually calling away youth and age alike from scanty rest and rare pleasure.

On the departure of the admonitory mother enter a stalwart young man, who instantly proceeds to urge the cause of love and deserving poverty in splendid periods. He is reminded, not without agitation, that stern parents have forbidden him to aspire to the hand of their sole hope and heiress on account of his lowly position, and the heroine dismisses him from behind her handkerchief. The disconsolate wooer's next proceeding is somewhat mysterious, for instead of retiring by the natural exit, he proceeds to fit himself, with considerable difficulty, under the inadequate table, from whence his extremities are plainly visible. Unconscious of this strange conduct, the heroine turns to the saucepans, and is understood to be preparing the family dinner. An amazing person now appears upon the scene, a lanky, shuffling object with a shock of red hair and a startlingly cadaverous countenance. He is arrayed-heaven save the mark !-in a dress-suit, with a large red silk handkerchief protruding from his attenuated waistcoat; time-before eleven o'clock in the morning! The conversation which ensues remains--so far as his share is concerned-wholly