our large towns know something more about this now than they knew a
few months ago. I believe there is no part of England in which the
practice of sacred music is so widely and lovingly pursued amongst
the working people as in the counties of Lancashire and Yorkshire.
There is no part of England where, until lately, there have been so
many poor men's pianos, which have been purchased by a long course
of careful savings from the workman's wages. These, of course, have
mostly been sold during the hard times to keep life in the owner and
his family. The great works of Handel, Haydn, Beethoven, and Mozart
have solaced the toil of thousands of the poorest working people of
Lancashire. Anybody accustomed to wander among the moorlands of the
country will remember how common it is to hear the people practising
sacred music in their lonely cottages. It is not uncommon to meet
working men wandering over the wild hills, "where whip and heather
grow," with their musical instruments, to take part in some village
oratorio many miles away. "That reminds me," as tale-tellers say, of
an incident among the hills, which was interesting, though far from
singular in my experience.

Up in the forest of Rosendale, between Derply Moor and the wild bill
called Swinshaw, there is a little lone valley, a green cup in the
mountains, called "Dean." The inhabitants of this valley are so
notable for their love of music, that they are known all through the
vales of Rosendale as "Th' Deighn Layrocks," or "The Larks of Dean."
In the twilight of a glorious Sunday evening, in the height of
summer, I was roaming over the heathery waste of Swinshaw, towards
Dean, in company with a musical friend of mine, who lived in the
neighbouring clough, when we saw a little crowd of people coming
down a moorland slope, far away in front of us. As they drew nearer,
we found that many of them had musical instruments, and when we met,