vowed that he should not have one foot of churchyard earth to rest in. They watched and watched, as described in the poem; but Nature was more successful than they. Nature, which takes to her bosom all her children, spite of their errors or their crimes, raged, but only in mercy. Such a night as that on which the village tyrant actually went to his grave, the villagers declare never came down before or since. Wind in fierce tornadoes, rain in drowning deluges, thunder and lightning terrible and incessant, came sweeping, dashing, roaring, and flaming together. The villagers, waiting in deadly wrath for the coming funeral, which had feared the face of day, were fairly driven, by the fury of the elements, from their purpose. In the midst of the tempest the appointed bearers staggered and reeled along to the grave, and every moment expected to be dashed with their burden to the earth. As they hurried along the avenue from the Hall, a stupendous tree fell with a crash of thunder across their path, and had nearly been the death of them all. As they approached the church, the storm was so furious, that they were compelled to lower the coffin from their shoulders, and bear it low, scarcely above the surface of the earth. At one moment the whole church and churchyard were lit with the fire of heaven; the light

ning seemed to play round every pinnacle with a lurid radiance, and to fill the church with its blaze, and then there was a darkness as of EgypAnd amid the blind buffeting tian denseness.

and drenching of the tempest, the cowering attendants, without bell or service, light, or the hearing of one another's voices, lowered down the coffin into its muddy, watery pit, and fled.

So went Sampson Hooks to his grave; and thus, only by the gracious fury of merciful Nature, were his remains protected from the relentless fury of embittered men.

JOHNNY DARBYSHIRE,

A

COUNTRY QUAKER.

Ir must have been remarked by the readers of "The Nooks of the World," in Tait's Magazine, and in my "Rural Life of England," that the people of the Midland Counties, particularly of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, have a singular practice of calling almost every body by diminutives of their Christian names, and seldom the plain, plump diminution of Tom, Jack, Jem, but Tommy, Jacky, Jemmy, and so on, generally ornamented with the prefix of Old, a word which in such use does not in the least denote age, for it is applied to youth, both in men and animals, just as much as to age, and indicates only a familiar mode of expression.

VOL. II.

Thinking it as well to notice this peculiarity as belonging to the people from amongst whom these sketches are drawn before I introduced another character with such an appellation, I will now also preface the introduction of Johnny Darbyshire with a few other remarks which may give a clear idea of his character, and of similar ones as we go along.

I have repeatedly alluded to and explained the perfect freedom of life, and the other concurring causes which go to produce such an extraordinary variety of character, and of most eccentric character, in the Rural Nooks of England. In this truly patriarchal life the heads of families, by their unlimited sway, acquire often a most unlimited authority. They have no law but their own will, in the house, and scarcely any out of it. They, therefore, grow often not only most eccentric, but most wilful, arbitrary, overbearing, and humorsome. Of this class Johnny Darbyshire is a complete specimen.

John Darbyshire, or, according to the regular custom of the country,-Johnny Darbyshire, was a farmer living in one of the most obscure parts of the country, on the borders of the Peak of Derbyshire. His fathers before him had occupied the same farm for generations; and as they had been Quakers from the days of George Fox, who

preached there and converted them, Johnny also was a Quaker. That is, he was, as many others were, and no doubt are, habitually a Quaker. He was a Quaker in dress, in language, in attendance of their meetings, and above all, in the unmitigated contempt which he felt and expressed for everything like fashion, for the practices of the world, for the Church, and for music and amusements. There never was a man, from the first to the present day of the society, who so thoroughly embodied and exhibited that quality attributed to the Quaker, in the rhyming nursery alphabet,-" Q was a Quaker, and would not bow down."

No, Johnny Darbyshire would not have bowed down to any mortal power. He would have marched into the presence of the king with his hat on, and would have addressed him with just the same unembarrassed freedom as "The old chap out of the West Countrie," is made to do in the song. As to any of the more humble and conceding qualities usually attributed to the peaceful Quaker, Johnny had not an atom of these about him. Never was there a more pigheaded, arbitrary, positive, pugnacious fellow. He would argue anybody out of their opinions by the hour; he would "threep them down," as he called it, that is, point blank and with a loud voice insist on