his warmest admirers could not help perceiving that his influence was lessened rather than increased by his return to parliament. In a lecture or a letter to the readers of the Register, he could magnify whatever question he took up, so as to make it seem unanswerable for the moment. But he was not fitted for a deliberative assembly like the House of Commons. His age, too, rendered it unlikely that he could adapt himself to the political atmosphere of parliament; nor was it long before his constitution began to shew that it was unfitted to sustain the evil effects of the late hours and bad ventilation of the House.

Prior to his becoming a member of the imperial legislature, Mr Cobbett had no very exalted opinion of the House of Commons, and it is evident that his more familiar acquaintance with 'the finest club in the world,' as it has been styled, did not raise the character of its members in his estimation. The Weekly Register is full of the most amusing complaints, regarding the careless, undignified way in which parliament manages the business of the nation. The want of proper accommodation was also a frequent source of grumbling. Why,' says the member for Oldham," are we squeezed into so small a space, that it is absolutely impossible that there should be calm and regular discussion, even from that circumstance alone? Why do we live in this hubbub? Why are we exposed to all these inconveniences? Why are 658 of us crammed into a space that allows to each of us no more than a foot and a half square, while at the same time, each of the servants of the king, whom we pay, has a palace to live in, and more unoccupied space in that palace, than the little hole into which we are all crammed, to make the laws by which this great kingdom is governed?' Few persons, he contends, could sit in that place as constantly as he had done, without injuring their health. He had never seen a regiment of soldiers of which the private men could have kept up the regular and constant attendance which he had given, without breaking down. His own power of enduring fatigue and late hours, he ascribes to his simple and temperate habits, never dining out, and having nothing to annoy him, except the very common grievance at that period of too many letters. But it was not the number that annoyed him, so much as the cost of postage, which formed a very heavy tax. 'Twelve letters a day,' he says, ' amount to L.18, 5s. a year, which is as much as is probably necessary to maintain my house one week out of the fifty-two. I need say no more to convince any reasonable man, that all two-penny post letters should come to me post-free.' Some of his correspondents, too, were persons who had no business with him-who wrote merely to obtain his autograph. Others annoyed him by adding Esquire' to his name; a title to which he considered he had no title. The worst evil connected with his parliamentary duties, however, was the necessity of spending so much of his time in the close and heated atmosphere of the House of Commons. In spite of his robust health and

his temperate habits, the hard work at home and long hours in the House were too much for him; and to these causes, doubtless, may be attributed the illness by which he was cut off so suddenly at last.

At the general election which followed the resignation of the Whig ministry in 1834, and the brief return of Sir Robert Peel to Downing Street, Mr Cobbett was again returned for Oldham, and resumed his regular attendance in the House in spite of an inflammatory attack from which he was suffering. When the Marquis of Chandos brought on his motion for the repeal of the malt-tax, Mr Cobbett attempted to speak in favour of it, but, owing to inflammation of the throat, from which he had not recovered, he could not make himself heard. He remained to vote on that occasion, thereby increasing his complaint. It was not till after another instance of the same imprudence, that he felt the serious nature of his illness, and saw the necessity of taking some care of himself. He resolved to go down to his farm near Farnham, and get rid of his hoarseness and inflammation. After a few weeks there, he seemed to have almost recovered his usual health, but he imprudently took tea in the open air, on the evening of Thursday, June 11, and the consequence was a violent relapse of his complaint. With a few fluctuations, he lingered for a week, during which he recovered so far as to be able to talk in the most sprightly manner upon politics and farming, and to express a wish for four days' rain for the Cobbett corn and the root crops.' On the day previous to his death, he could not rest in the house, but insisted on being carried round the farm. The strong man, who had hardly ever known what illness was, seemed as if he would set disease at defiance to the very last. That night he grew more and more feeble-the journey round the farm had been the last flicker in the socket. About one o'clock on Thursday morning, the 18th of June 1835, William Cobbett expired, in the seventy-fourth year of his age.

On the 27th June, the funeral took place from Normandy Farm. The procession was attended by Mr Fielden, M.P., Mr O'Connell, Mr Wakley, and several other members of parliament. By the time it had reached Farnham, it was swelled by thousands of labourers in their smock-frocks and straw-hats, who followed the procession to the church-yard, where the mortal remains of England's greatest self-taught prose writer were deposited beside those of his humble ancestors.

And now, looking back at the forty years of stern battling with abuses which he maintained so resolutely, many persons scruple not to affirm that Cobbett deserves no higher place in history than is given to a Wilkes, a Sacheverel, or any of those other self-exaggerating agitators who have disturbed society at various periods during the last two centuries, and whose names must speedily sink into well-merited oblivion. Those who form such an estimate, however, only shew their ignorance of the man, and of the powerful

influence he exercised on public affairs, more especially during the last twenty or thirty years of his active and laborious life. Without speaking of the many admirable volumes he wrotethe Advice to Young Men, the Rural Rides, the Year's Residence in America, the Cottage Economy, the Tour in Scotland, the English Gardener, the Woodlands, almost any one of which would have given him a high place in literature as one of the finest painters of rural life-no one who is familiar with his political writings, and who has paid attention to the gradual progress of the great Condition of England Question' since the end of the war, can fail to perceive that William Cobbett did more to awaken public opinion to a sense of its duty towards the poor, gave a more powerful impulse to the movement for bettering the condition of the working-classes, which is rapidly becoming the greatest question of the day, than any writer of the present century. What higher praise could be awarded to a public journalist!

6

Y earliest recollections-and they are of many years ago, for I am no longer young-carry me back to a dark and dirty room in the neighbourhood of Drury Lane. The ceiling was smokestained, the paper faded and torn, and the windows, from never being cleaned, admitted no prospect and scarcely any sunshine from without. There was a battered pianoforte in one corner, of that old-fashioned kind I knew afterwards was called a clavecin. This was crowded with heaps of yellow dusty music. There was also a bass viol, several violins, and my father's music-desk, for No. 67.

1.

he was a musician, and played in the band of Drury Lane Theatre. I also recollect that a portrait of Mrs Billington, and a print of David Garrick were suspended on the walls, and that my father's easy-chair was generally occupied by a large black cat, the dearest playfellow of my childhood. I was a lonely, motherless, neglected little creature, without amusement and without education. I could not read. There were some dusty volumes lying about, with curious frontispieces, and portraits of a past generation of actors in strange dresses, scattered at long intervals amid their pages. These I used to look at day by day with hopeless admiration and perplexity, and turn over leaf after leaf of those mysterious printed characters which had no meaning for my eyes, till I wept for very ignorance and shame. I used now and then to see my father reading the newspaper on a Sunday morning, and sometimes smiling over its contents. I never dared to ask him if I might learn to do the same, for he was harsh and cold, and seldom seemed aware even of my presence; but I have sat for many a silent hour and watched the motion of his eyes along the lines with inexpressible longing.

I have said that these are my earliest recollections; but I seemed even then to have dim remembrances, broken and shadowy enough, of a time long before. They were not so much remembrances, either, as reflections from a faded light, like images mirrored dreamily in water. Fragments of old rhymes and fairy stories floated in my mind, mingled with the tones of a soft voice; and these I used to strive to summon back again, and loved to connect the scattered links with the weavings of my own fancy. Sometimes too, when I was lying in my bed, with the moonlight streaming in through the uncurtained window, I woke from pleasant dreams in which I seemed to see a gentle face, forgotten, yet familiar, and then slept to dream again.

I was very young at this time; not more, I should fancy, than seven years of age; but I never knew the exact date of my birth, nor do I now. The house in which we lived was let out from kitchen to attic. The ground-floor and shop belonged to a Jew, who made up clothing for the stage, and kept all kinds of hideous masks, glittering dresses, swords, and fearful things, for hire. If ever I went out into the street, I hurried past his door with uncontrollable terror. I cannot even now recall, without a shudder, the hideous laugh with which he used to greet my flying steps, and the way in which he lay in wait for my return, thrusting his yellow face through the half-opened door, and asking me if I would not give one little kiss to old Soloman!

I had a beautiful voice. I used to sing for hours in the day, and delighted, in my father's absence, to repeat, in my clear childish treble, the airs and brilliant variations I sometimes heard him practising upon the violin. From daily exercise in this amusement, I attained to such proficiency that I could warble the most difficult bravura passages with perfect fluency.