By sunset, therefore, it usually happened that, through utter
exhaustion amongst men and horses, the road sank into profound silence.
Except the exhaustion in the vast adjacent county of York from a
contested election, no such silence succeeding to no such fiery uproar
was ever witnessed in England.
On this occasion the usual silence and solitude prevailed along the
road. Not a hoof nor a wheel was to be heard. And, to strengthen this
false luxurious confidence in the noiseless roads, it happened also
that the night was one of peculiar solemnity and peace. For my own
part, though slightly alive to the possibilities of peril, I had so far
yielded to the influence of the mighty calm as to sink into a profound
reverie. The month was August; in the middle of which lay my own
birthday--a festival to every thoughtful man suggesting solemn and
often sigh-born [Footnote: "_Sigh-born_":--I owe the suggestion of
this word to an obscure remembrance of a beautiful phrase in "Giraldus
Cambrensis"--viz., _suspiriosae cogitationes_.] thoughts. The county
was my own native county--upon which, in its southern section, more
than upon any equal area known to man past or present, had descended
the original curse of labour in its heaviest form, not mastering the
bodies only of men, as of slaves, or criminals in mines, but working
through the fiery will.
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