of two causes.  Either the possessor falls into idle, drinking habits, and so is obliged eventually to sell his property:  or he finds, if more shrewd and adventurous, that the “beck” running down the mountain-side, or the minerals beneath his feet, can be turned into a new source of wealth; and leaving the old plodding life of a landowner with small capital, he turns manufacturer, or digs for coal, or quarries for stone.

Still there are those remaining of this class—­dwellers in the lonely houses far away in the upland districts—­even at the present day, who sufficiently indicate what strange eccentricity—­what wild strength of will—­nay, even what unnatural power of crime was fostered by a mode of living in which a man seldom met his fellows, and where public opinion was only a distant and inarticulate echo of some clearer voice sounding behind the sweeping horizon.

A solitary life cherishes mere fancies until they become manias.  And the powerful Yorkshire character, which was scarcely tamed into subjection by all the contact it met with in “busy town or crowded mart,” has before now broken out into strange wilfulness in the remoter districts.  A singular account was recently given me of a landowner (living, it is true, on the Lancashire side of the hills, but of the same blood and nature as the dwellers on the other,) who was supposed to be in the receipt of seven or eight hundred a year, and whose house bore marks of handsome antiquity, as if his forefathers had been for a long time people of consideration.  My informant was struck with the appearance of the place, and proposed to the countryman who was accompanying him, to go up to it and take a nearer inspection.  The reply was, “Yo’d better not; he’d threap yo’ down th’ loan.  He’s let fly at some folk’s legs, and let shot lodge in ’em afore now, for going too near to his house.”  And finding, on closer inquiry, that such was really the inhospitable custom of this moorland squire, the gentleman gave up his purpose.  I believe that the savage yeoman is still living.

Another squire, of more distinguished family and larger property—­one is thence led to imagine of better education, but that does not always follow—­died at his house, not many miles from Haworth, only a few years ago.  His great amusement and occupation had been cock-fighting.  When he was confined to his chamber with what he knew would be his last illness, he had his cocks brought up there, and watched the bloody battle from his bed.  As his mortal disease increased, and it became impossible for him to turn so as to follow the combat, he had looking-glasses arranged in such a manner, around and above him, as he lay, that he could still see the cocks fighting.  And in this manner he died.

These are merely instances of eccentricity compared to the tales of positive violence and crime that have occurred in these isolated dwellings, which still linger in the memories of the old people of the district, and some of which were doubtless familiar to the authors of “Wuthering Heights” and “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”