On this occasion, the usual silence and solitude pre-
vailed along the road. Not a hoof nor a wheel was to
be heard. And to strengthen this false luxurious con-
fidence in the noiseless roads, it happened also that the
night was one of peculiar solemnity and peace. I
myself, though slightly alive to the possibilities of petil,
had so far yielded to the influence of the mighty calm
as to sink into a profound reverie. The month was
August, in which lay my own birth-day ; a festival to
every thoughtful man, suggesting solemn and often
13



186 THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH.
sigh-born thoughts.' The county was my own native
county — upon which, in its southern section, more
than upon any equal area known to man past or
present, had descended the original curse of labor in
its heaviest form, not mastering the bodies of men
only as slaves, or criminals • in mines, but working
through the fiery will. Upon no equal space of earth,
was, or ever had been, the same energy of human
power put forth daily. At this particular season also
of the assizes, that dreadful hurricane of flight and
pursuit, as it might have seemed to a stranger, that
swept to and from Lancaster all day long, hunting the
county up and down, and regularly subsiding about
sunset, united with the permanent distinction of Lan-
cashire as the veiy metropolis and citadel of labor, to
point the thoughts pathetically upon that counter vision
of rest, of saintly repose from strife and sorrow,
towards which, as to their secret haven, the profounder
aspirations of man's heart are pontinually travelling.
