head and tail, remains the undisputed master
of the position.

The inhabitants of this hill district are
clannish and self-reliant. They live and marry
amongst themselves, and present the high cheek-
bones and hard features which generally mark
the Yorkshire race. A few wild offshoots are
occasionally sent out as scouts, in the shape of
wandering boys who see the misty sea between
the hills, and go down to its tempting fishing-
boats, and away in its gliding ships; but they
return as " master mariners" to be buried in
their native moorland churchyard, and to add
their testimony to those who have been round
the world, and pronounce that there is nothing
in it worth mentioning.

A favourable specimen of a moorland village
in the hills, is Lofthouse, in Cleveland, about
half way between Redcar and Whitby.
Attracted by a handbill advertisement of a " Grand
Village Band Contest" at this place, on Friday,
September 30, 1859, I procured a dog-cart at
Redcar, and was driven over the greatest part
of the way, like the hero of Lammermoor,
along the sands, but with not quite such a melancholy
result. At length, winding slowly down
a hill which we had reached into a valley;
past a waggon heavily laden with provisions,
which was toiling over to the village festival,
while the group of shouting schoolboys who were
interested in its contents were making short
cuts to Lofthouse, by scampering over the
stubbly fields; past the village clergyman and
his favourite monitor, driving over on the same
cheerful errand in a substantial four-wheeled
chaise; past another waggon, loaded with gravel-
coloured peasants mixed with women, boys, and
girls, on shafts, back, front, and sides, and
almost on the wheels; past a solitary omnibus
from Guisboro', specially chartered by one of
the competing bands, in which an ophicleide, as
large as a village pump, appeared to hold the
post of honour, and dingy Sax-horns were nursed
by rough-looking musical nurses, as if they were
children of priceless worth; past many
pedestrians who were jolting down one hill, and
toiling up another, on their road to the scene of the
musical prize fight; past all the signs of a not
very distant attraction, down into the valley,
across a stone bridge, and up through a dark
fir-wood, until at last we drove up to the door of
the principal inn in Lofthouse, the Golden Lion.

There was nothing very peculiar in my
appearance, except that I was an alien and
a stranger in a place unaccustomed to public
visitors; but my general impression is that
Lofthouse was wholly unable to make me
out. Several dogs came up to examine me,
lolled out their tongues and wagged their
tails, and then disappeared in one or other
of the open doorways. A large shopkeeper,
in a small general way of business, surveyed
me from between a number of miscellaneous
articles that stood in his shop window amongst
dead blue-bottles and expiring wasps. A
young lady in full evening costume, even to alow
dress and crinoline (the daughter of a leading
draper in the village), came out to her father's
door, and after surveying me for several minutes,
retired into the dim recesses of the shop, totally
incapable of making me out. Another young
lady at a rival draper's, who was adorning
herself for the mid-day festival, after examining
me several times, for periods of from one to five
minutes each, from her chamber window,
continued her toilet, at last, in despair, because
she, too, was unable to make me out. A
number of boys with vacant faces and open
mouths, who stood motionless in the road at
the front of the Golden Lion door, with
their heads bent forward, their hands thrust into
their pockets, and their knees disposed of at
different degrees of inward inclination, were also
perfectly unable to make me out. An aged
bandy-legged man in drab cloth gaiters, who
came to, and went from, the threshold of an
opposite doorway, like the figure over a Swiss
fancy clock, was probably making himself quite
ill in his fruitless endeavours to make me
out. A tottering old woman in an adjoining
doorway was another observer of the single
alien and stranger, and she, like the others, was
incapable of making me out.

The Golden Lion, and its landlord, were
far above any such idle curiosity on such a busy
day (for them), and while they were as ignorant
as any one in the village as to who I was, or
who I might be, they made me pretty clearly
understand that they cared very little to know,
as long as I stood out of the way. The usual
hotel form of " showing" me " to a room," was
certainly gone through, and I availed myself of
it to deposit my great-coat, and my travelling-
bag; but, finding that six Lofthouse men were
engaged at the window in hanging out a flag, and
that preparations had been made for turning this
and all the other sleeping apartments into tap-
rooms at a later period of the day, I gave it up,
without a murmur, into the hands of resolute
festivity, and proceeded down stairs to the old-
fashioned stone-floored parlour, that was also
kitchen, tap-room, and bar.

Here I found the first band that had come
into Lofthouse to try its musical skill, very
busily engaged in trying the Lofthouse rum and
ale; while, hanging up by hooks from the ceiling,
amongst many bundles of dried winter
herbs, were several cornopeans to be used in
the harmonious fight.

The usual plan of band-approach appeared
to be, to stop about two hundred yards outside
the houses, and then to tramp in, playing a
defiant march. Upon drawing up before the
Golden Lion, the players formed a circle,
and finished off with another defiant tune, which
seemed to say to all Lofthouse, " We are Farndale;
beat that if you can!"

Before the arrival of another party of
combatants, these performers retired to one of the
drinking rooms, where the landlord gazed upon
them with a silent but fatherly interest, having
more regard to what they drank than to what
they played.

They sat upon tables, and along benches