For weeks before the great Carlisle annual contest

For weeks before the great Carlisle annual contest

For weeks before the great Carlisle annual contest

It is impossible to conceive the intense and passionate interest taken by the whole northern population in this most rural and muscular amusement. For weeks before the great Carlisle annual contest, nothing else is talked of on road, field, flood, foot or horseback; we fear it is thought of even in church, which we regret and condemn; and in every little comfortable public within a circle of thirty miles diameter, the home-brewed quivers in the glasses on the oaken tables to knuckles smiting the boards in corroboration of the claims to the championship of Grahame, a Cass, a Laughlin, Solid Yak, a Wilson, or a Weightman. A political friend of oursa staunch fellowin passing through the lakes last autumn, heard of nothing but the contest for the county, which he had understood would be between Lord Lowther (the sitting member) and Mr. Brougham. But to his sore perplexity, he heard the claims of new candidates, to him hitherto unknown; and on meeting us at that best of inns, the White Lion, Bowness, he told us with a downcast and serious countenance that Lord Lowther would be ousted, for that the struggle, as far as he could learn, would ultimately be between Thomas Ford of Egremont, and William Richardson of Caldbeck, men of no landed property, and probably Radicals.... It is, in our opinion, and according to our taste, not easy, to the most poetical and picturesque imagination, to create for itself a more beautiful sight than the ring at Carlisle.... Fifteen thousand people, perhaps, are there, all gazing anxiously on the candidates for the county. Down goes Cass, Weightman is the standing member; and the agitation of a thousand passions, a suppressed shudder and an under-growl, moves the mighty multitude like an earthquake. No savage anger, no boiling rage of ruined blacklegs, no leering laughter of mercenary swellssights and sounds which we must confess do sicken the sense at Newmarket and Moulseybut the visible and audible movements of calm, strong, temperate English hearts, free from all fear of ferocity, and swayed for a few moments of sublime pathos by the power of nature working in victory or defeat.