A Month in Yorkshire

l?The Belfry. Jotjrneying from Hull to Beverley by ' market-train' on the morrow, I had ample proof, in the noisy talk of the crowded passengers, that Yorkshire dialect and its peculiar idioms are not " rapidly disappearing before the facilities for travel afforded by railways." Nor could I fail to notice what has before struck me, that taken class for class, the people north of Coventry exhibit a rudeness, not to say coarseness of manners, which is rarely seen south of that ancient city. In Staffordshire, within twenty miles of Birmingham, there are districts where baptism, marriage, and other moral and religious observances considered as essentials of Christianity, are as completely disregarded as among the heathen. In some parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire similar characteristics prevail; but rude manners do not necessarily imply loose morality. Generally speaking the rudeness is a safety-valve that lets off the faults or seeming faults of character; and I for one prefer rudeness to that over-refinement prevalent in Middlesex, where you may not call things by their right names, and where, as a consequence, the sense of what is fraudulent, and criminal, and wicked, has become weakened, because of the very mild and innocent words in which ' good society' requires that dishonesty and sin should be spoken of. If we alight at Cottingham and take a walk in the neighbourhood we may discover the scene of a romantic incident. There stood Baynard Castle, a grand old f...