A RIOT CHECKED A CRASH-smash-shiver-stopped their whispers. A simultaneously-hurled volley of stones had saluted the broad front of the mill, with all its windows; and now every pane of every lattice lay in shattered and pounded fragments. A yell followed this demonstration—a rioters' yell—a North of England-a Yorkshire -a West-Riding-a West-Riding-clothing-district-of-Yorkshire rioters' yell. You never heard that sound, perhaps, reader? So much the better for your ears—perhaps for your heart; since, if it rends the air in hate to yourself, or to the men or principles you approve, the interests to which you wish well, Wrath wakens to the cry of Hate: the Lion shakes his mane, and rises to the howl of the Hyena Caste stands up, ireful against Caste; and the indignant, wronged spirit of the Middle Rank bears down in zeal and scorn on the famished and furious mass of the Operative class. It is difficult to be tolerant-difficult to be just-in such moments. : Caroline rose, Shirley put her arm round her they stood together as still as the straight stems of two trees. That yell was a long one, and when it ceased, the night was yet full of the swaying and murmuring of a crowd. "What next?" was the question of the listeners. Nothing came yet. The mill remained mute as a mausoleum. "He cannot be alone!" whispered Caroline. "I would stake all I have, that he is as little alone as he is alarmed," responded Shirley. Shots were discharged by the rioters. Had the defenders waited for this signal? It seemed so. The hitherto inert and passive mill woke fire flashed from its empty window-frames; a volley of musketry pealed sharp through the Hollow. "Moore speaks at last!" said Shirley, "and he seems to have the gift of tongues; that was not a single voice." "He has been forbearing; no one can accuse him of rashness," alleged Caroline: "their discharge preceded his: they broke his gates and his windows; they fired at his garrison before he repelled them." What was going on now? It seemed difficult in the darkness to distinguish, but something terrible, a still-renewing tumult, was obvious fierce attacks, desperate repulses; the mill-yard, the mill itself, was full of battle movement: there was scarcely any cessation now of the discharge of firearms; and there was struggling, rushing, trampling, and shouting between. The aim of the assailants seemed to be to enter the mill, that of the defendants to beat them off. They heard the rebel leader cry, "To the back, lads!" They heard a voice retort, “Come round, we will meet you!" "To the counting-house!" was the order again. "Welcome!-We shall have you there!" was the response. And accordingly the fiercest blaze that had yet glowed, the loudest rattle that had yet been heard, burst from the countinghouse front, when the mass of rioters rushed up to it. They The voice that had spoken was Moore's own voice. could tell by its tones that his soul was now warm with the conflict they could guess that the fighting animal was roused in every one of those men there struggling together, and was for the time quite paramount above the rational human being. Both the girls felt their faces glow and their pulses throb : both knew they would do no good by rushing down into the mêlée: they desired neither to deal nor to receive blows; but they could not have run away-Caroline no more than Shirley; they could not have fainted; they could not have taken their eyes from the dim, terrible scene-from the mass of cloud, of smokethe musket-lightning-for the world. "How and when would it end?" was the demand throbbing in their throbbing pulses. "Would a juncture arise in which they could be useful?" was what they waited to see; for, though Shirley put off their too-late arrival with a jest, and was ever ready to satirise her own or any other person's enthusiasm, she would have given a farm of her best land for a chance of rendering good service. The chance was not vouchsafed her; the looked-for juncture never came: it was not likely. Moore had expected this attack for days, perhaps weeks; he was prepared for it at every point. He had fortified and garrisoned his mill, which was in itself a strong building: he was a cool, brave man he stood to the defence with unflinching firmness; those who were with him caught his spirit, and copied his demeanour. The rioters had never been so met before. At other mills they had attacked, they had found no resistance; an organised, resolute defence was what they had never dreamed of encountering. When their leaders saw the steady fire kept up from the mill, witnessed the composure and determination of its owner, heard themselves coolly defied and invited on to death, and beheld their men falling wounded round them, they felt that nothing was to be done here. In haste, they mustered their forces, drew them away from the building a roll was called over, in which the men answered to figures instead of names; they dispersed wide over the fields, leaving silence and ruin behind them. The attack, from its commencement to its termination, had not occupied an hour. Day was by this time approaching the west was dim, the east beginning to gleam. It would have seemed that the girls who had watched this conflict would now wish to hasten to the victors, on whose side all their interest had been enlisted; but they only very cautiously approached the now battered mill, and, when suddenly a number of soldiers and gentlemen appeared at the great door opening into the yard, they quickly stepped aside into a shed, the deposit of old iron and timber, whence they could see without being seen. It was no cheering spectacle: these premises were now a mere blot of desolation on the fresh front of the summer-dawn. All the copse up the Hollow was shady and dewy, the hill at its head was green; but just here in the centre of the sweet glen, Discord, broken loose in the night from control, had beaten the ground with his stamping hoofs, and left it waste and pulverised. The mill yawned all ruinous with unglazed frames; the yard was thickly bestrewn with stones and brickbats, and, close under the mill, with the glittering fragments of the shattered windows, muskets and other weapons lay here and there; more than one deep crimson stain was visible on the gravel; a human body lay quiet on its face near the gates; and five or six wounded men writhed and moaned in the bloody dust. Miss Keeldar's countenance changed at this view: it was the after-taste of the battle, death and pain replacing excitement and exertion it was the blackness the bright fire leaves when its blaze is sunk, its warmth failed, and its glow faded. "That is what I wished to prevent," she said, in a voice whose cadence betrayed the altered impulse of her heart. (From Shirley.) JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE [Born 1818, son of the Archdeacon of Totnes, and brother of Richard Hurrell Froude. Educated at Westminster School, and at Oriel College, Oxford (1836-40); Fellow of Exeter. He took deacon's orders in 1844, but in 1847 published the Nemesis of Faith, resigned his fellowship, and gave himself up to literature, writing for Fraser and the Westminster. The History of England appeared between 1856 and 1870, the English in Ireland in 1872, the Life of Carlyle in 1882-84, Oceana in 1886. Appointed Professor of History at Oxford, 1892; died 1894.] FROUDE was one of the most productive writers of his day, but through the forty or more volumes of history, romance, travels, essays, personal narrative and biography which constitute his works, there may easily be traced a single note. Early in life it was his fortune to fall under two great influences, Newman's and Carlyle's. Carlyle's proved the stronger, and when Froude first caught the public ear, his opinions were already formed upon those of his master. With Carlyle, Ruskin, and Kingsley he must be classed as belonging to the band of latter-day Protestants (to use the word in its primary sense) whose influence has been so powerful in suggesting the social and political ideas of to-day. His interest in history was ethical. In the writing of history he found a splendid vehicle for his convictions; but he was ever ready to throw off the trappings and trammels of the historian and to appear in his true guise, that of the preacher or prophet. If Ruskin (as Carlyle said) was the greatest preacher of his generation, Froude was a good second. Like the Roman senator of old, he could not speak without recurring to his one deep-set conviction— Delenda est Carthago: down with the Carthage of canting wealth, dishonest religiosity, mock patriotism! Such is the text of all his writings. The Nemesis of Faith was a formal attack on the spirit of compromise; the History was, at least in its inception, a protest against the theory that material progress spells improvement, or that we are better than our ancestors; the English in Ireland was a challenge to democratic methods, Casar a warning to constitutional bigots. Hardly one of his books but has begotten a controversy. 66 If the average reader were asked to name Froude's special quality, he would probably reply that he is uniformly interesting. With some confidence one may hazard the guess that the twelve volumes of the History of England have been read from cover to cover by more persons than any other consecutive English work of equal length written during the last half-century. The Short Studies reveal the same power of compelling attention; the Life of Carlyle ranks with the Life of Johnson and the Life of Macaulay; Oceana is as difficult to lay down as Eothen. Froude possessed the secret of eloquence, and used it to the full, though no man took more pleasure in declaiming against oratory. But to his eloquence was added the more rare talent of sincerity. 'Egotism," says the hero of the Nemesis, "is not tiresome, or it ought not to be, if one is sincere about oneself; but it is so hard to be sincere." Froude always chose subjects which were of intense interest to himself; his style reflected the clearness of his convictions, and his sincerity was as transparent as his style. He is the most egotistical, and the most delightful, of historians. Having made up his own mind about the events which he narrates, he cannot rest till he has made up the reader's also. Some writers place a narrative before us as we throw a bone to a dog: their motto seems to be "Take it, or leave it; anyhow we have done with it." It is not so with Froude. As we read we feel that the narrative is not to him an end in itself: it is rather an opportunity of operating on our feelings, raising or dissipating our prejudices, suggesting new views, and influencing the present through the past. His conception of history is given in a fine passage in the Life of Carlyle, which will be found below. It is characteristic of his mental attitude that in the short mythical sketch called A Siding at a Railway Station, where judgment is passed on his own career, the one claim which he allows himself to make is that "The worst charge of wilfully and dishonestly setting down what I did not believe to be true was not alleged against me." Froude cannot be called a master of style in the sense in which Gibbon, or Newman, or Macaulay deserves the name. There are few pages in his writings of which we could say with certainty, were they shown to us for the first time, that Froude, |