Lancashire was not so wonderful a place forty years ago as it is at present, but, compared then with the rest of England, it was infinitely more striking. For a youth like Endymion, born and bred in our southern counties, the Berkshire downs varied by the bustle of Pall–Mall and the Strand—Lancashire, with its teeming and toiling cities, its colossal manufactories and its gigantic chimneys, its roaring engines and its flaming furnaces, its tramroads and its railroads, its coal and its cotton, offered a far greater contrast to the scenes in which he had hitherto lived, than could be furnished by almost any country of the European continent.

Endymion felt it was rather a crisis in his life, and that his future might much depend on the fulfilment of the confidential office which had been entrusted to him by his chief. He summoned all his energies, concentrated his intelligence on the one subject, and devoted to its study and comprehension every moment of his thought and time. After a while, he had made Manchester his head-quarters. It was even then the centre of a network of railways, and gave him an easy command of the contiguous districts.

Endymion had more than once inquired after the Anti–Corn-Law League, but had not as yet been so fortunate as to attend any of their meetings. They were rarer than they afterwards soon became, and the great manufacturers did not encourage them. “I do not like extreme views,” said one of the most eminent one day to Endymion. “In my opinion, we should always avoid extremes;” and he paused and looked around, as if he had enunciated a heaven-born truth, and for the first time. “I am a Liberal; so we all are here. I supported Lord Grey, and I support Lord Melbourne, and I am, in everything, for a liberal policy. I don’t like extremes. A wise minister should take off the duty on cotton wool. That is what the country really wants, and then everybody would be satisfied. No; I know nothing about this League you ask about, and I do not know any one—that is to say, any one respectable—who does. They came to me to lend my name. ‘No,’ I said, ‘gentlemen; I feel much honoured, but I do not like extremes;’ and they went away. They are making a little more noise now, because they have got a man who has the gift of the gab, and the people like to go and hear him speak. But as I said to a friend of mine, who seemed half inclined to join them, ‘Well; if I did anything of that sort, I would be led by a Lancashire lad. They have got a foreigner to lead them, a fellow out of Berkshire; an agitator—and only a print-work after all. No; that will never do.’”

Notwithstanding these views, which Endymion found very generally entertained by the new world in which he mixed, he resolved to take the earliest opportunity of attending the meeting of the League, and it soon arrived.

It was an evening meeting, so that workmen—or the operatives, as they were styled in this part of the kingdom—should be able to attend. The assembly took place in a large but temporary building; very well adapted to the human voice, and able to contain even thousands. It was fairly full to-night; and the platform, on which those who took a part in the proceedings, or who, by their comparatively influential presence, it was supposed, might assist the cause, was almost crowded.

“He is going to speak to-night,” said an operative to Endymion. “That is why there is such an attendance.”

Remembering Mr. Wilton’s hint about not asking unnecessary questions which often arrest information, Endymion did not inquire who “he” was; and to promote communication merely observed, “A fine speaker, then, I conclude?”

“Well, he is in a way............