value of the relics, he let the matter drop; and, rubbing his hands and chuckling with his peculiar sardonic smile, began to treat the affair as the world did, and the inestimable fragments of the disinterred Quaker suddenly disappeared, and were never heard of more.

As he was broiled on a gridiron for refusing to give up the treasures of the church committed to his care, so Cobbett vowed that he would consent to be broiled upon certain terms, in his Register, dated Long Island, on the 24th of September, 1819, wherein he wrote the well-known prophecy on Peel's Cash Payments Bill of that year as follows:-"I, William Cobbett, assert that to carry their bill into effect is impossible; and I say that if this bill be carried into full effect, I will give Castlereagh leave to lay me on a gridiron, and broil me alive, while Sidmouth may stir the coals, and Canning stand by and laugh at my groans.'

On the hoisting of the gridiron on the Register, he wrote and published the fulfilment of his prophecy in the following statement :-" Peel's bill, together with the laws about small notes, which last were in force when Peel's bill was passed; these laws, all taken together, if they had gone into effect, would have put an end to all small notes on the first day of May, 1823; but to precede this blowing-up of the whole of the funding system, an act was passed, in the month of July, 1822, to prevent these laws, and especially that part of Peel's bill which put an end to small Bank of England notes, from going into full effect; thus the system received a respite; and thus did the parliament fulfil the above prophecy of September, 1819."

A large sign-gridiron was actually made for Mr. Cobbett. It was of dimensions sufficient for him to have lain thereon (he was six feet high); the implement was gilt, and we remember to have seen it in his office-window, in Fleet Street; but it was never hoisted outside the office. It was long to be seen on the gable end of a building next Mr. Cobbett's house at Kensington.

Cobbett possessed extraordinary native vigour of mind; but every portion of his history is marked by strange blunders. Shakspeare, the British Museum, antiquities, posterity, America, France, Germany, were one and all, either wholly indifferent to him, or objects of bitter contempt. He absurdly condemned the British Museum as a bundle of dead insects." In 1833, Cobbett thus spoke in the House of

Commons, when a grant of money was asked in support of the Museum :—

"He would ask,' said the honourable gentleman, 'of what use in the whole world was this British Museum, and to whom, to what class of persons, it was useful? It did a great deal of good to the majority of those who went to it, but to nobody else. Let those who lounged in it, and made it a place of amusement, contribute to its support. Why should tradesmen and farmers be called upon to pay for the support of a place which was intended only for the amusement of the curious and the rich, and not for the benefit or for the instruction of the poor. If the aristocracy wanted the Museum as a lounging place, let them pay for it. For his own part, he did not know where this British Museum was, nor did he know much of the contents of it; but from the little he had heard of it, even if he knew where it was, he would not take the trouble of going to see it. He should like to have a list of the salaried persons; he should like to know who they were; he should like above all things to see whether they were not some dependents of Government-some of the aristocratic fry. He wanted their names-the names of the maids who swept out the rooms, to see whose daughters they were; whether they were the daughters of the heads of the establishment, or what other relation they bore to them.' He concluded by declaring that 'this British Museum job was one of the most scandalous that disgraced the Government, and when he said that he could not make it more disgraceful.'

Cobbett abused drinking "the immortal memory as a contradiction of terms; and stigmatised 66 consuming the midnight oil" as cant and humbug. His political nicknames were very ludicrous: as "Big O" for O'Connell ; "Prosperity Robinson" for a flaming Chancellor of the Exchequer ; and "shoy-hoy" for all degrees of quacks and pretenders. Still, his own gridiron was a monstrous piece of quackery, as audacious as any charlatan ever set up.

When he had a subject that excited him, he handled it not as an accomplished writer, but "with the perfect and inimitable art with which a dog picks up a bone.' Still his own work would not bear this sort of handling-witness the biting critique upon his English Grammar, which provoked the remark that he would undertake to write a Chinese grammar.

Cobbett affected to despise all acquirements which he had not. In his English Grammar he selects examples of bad English from the writings of Dr. Johnson and Dr. Watts, and is very contemptuous on "what are called the learned languages;" but he would not have entered upon Latin or Greek.

Lady Holland once asked Sir Henry Bulwer if he did not think she sometimes said ill-natured things; and on his acquiescing, she rejoined: "I don't mean to burn any one, but merely to poke the fire." Cobbett liked to poke the fire, to make a blaze; but in general, not always-he thought more of sport than of mischief.

It is curious to observe how frequently Fox alludes to the early writings of Cobbett, bearing unconscious testimony to the influence, temporary but decisive, exerted by the Register over the opinions even of the leading statesmen of the time.

In country or in town, at Barn Elms, in Bolt Court, or at Kensington, Cobbett wrote his Registers early in the morning: these, it must be admitted, had force enough; for he said truly, "Though I never attempt to put forth that sort of stuff which the intense people on the other side of the Channel call eloquence, I bring out strings of very interesting facts; I use pretty powerful arguments; and I hammer them down so closely upon the mind, that they seldom fail to produce a lasting impression." This he owed, doubtless, to his industry, early rising, and methodical habits.

It seemed to be Cobbett's aim to keep himself fresh in the public eye by some means of advertisement or other; a few were very reprehensible, but none more than his disinterring the bones of Thomas Paine, buried in a field on his own estate near New Rochelle, and bringing these bones to England, where, Cobbett calculated, pieces of them would be worn as memorials of the gross scoffer. Cobbett, however, never more widely mistook English feeling: instead of arousing, as he expected, the enthusiasm of the republican party in this country, he only drew upon himself universal contempt.

The general regret at Cobbett's death extended to all persons. Whatever a man's talents were, whatever a man's opinions, he sought the Register with eagerness, and read it with amusement, partly, perhaps, if De Rochefoucauld is right, because, whatever his party, he was sure to see his friends abused; but partly also, because he was sure to find, amidst a great many fictions and abundance of impudence, some felicitous nick-names, some excellent pieces of practical-looking arguments, some capital expressions, and very often some marvellously fine writing, all the finer for being carelessly fine, and exhibiting the figure or sentiment it set forth in the simplest and most striking dress; Cobbett, indeed, himself said that his popularity was owing to his

giving truth in popular language; and his language always did leave his meaning as visible as the most limpid stream did leave its bed. But as to its displaying truths, that is a different matter, and it would be utterly impossible, unless truth has, at least, as many heads as the Hydra of fable, in which case our author may claim the merit of having portrayed them all.

Cobbett's character is considered to have been never so low as about 1828, when he offered himself as a candidate for the place of common councilman for Farringdon Without, and he did not find even one person who would propose him for the office.

A foolish and out-of-the-way motion, praying his Majesty to strike Sir Robert Peel's name off the list of the Privy Council, for having proposed a return to cash payments in 1819, was his wildest effort and most signal defeat, the House receiving Sir Robert, when he stood up in his defence, with a loud burst of cheers, and voting in a majority of 298 to 4 in his favour. Cobbett, however, was nothing abashed, for this motion was rather a piece of fun, in his own way, than anything serious.

In the memorable year of political disasters (1830), when fires blazed throughout the country, and rumours of plots and insurrections were rife, Cobbett's Register appeared with a powerful article, which indirectly excited to incendiarism and rebellion. The Attorney-general prosecuted it, but the jury being unable to agree to a verdict, walked triumphantly out of court, and Cobbett having gained some credit by this trial, was shortly afterwards returned to Parliament for Oldham, being at the same time an unsuccessful candidate for Manchester. The ploughboy, the private of the 54th, after a variety of vicissitudes, had become a member of the British Legislature. He was there, as he had been through life, an isolated man. He owned no followers, and he was owned by none. He had sneered at education and philosophy, and at negro emancipation. He had assailed alike Catholicism and Protestantism; he had respected feelings that few Englishmen respect. His years surpassed those of any other member who ever came into Parliament for the first time, expecting to take an active part in it. He was stout and hale for his time of life, fast advancing towards threescore years and ten. Sir Henry Bulwer, who entered Parliament at about the same time as Cobbett, describes him as an "elderly, respectablelooking, red-faced gentleman, in a dust-coloured coat, and drab

breeches, with gaiters; tall and strongly built, but stooping, with sharp eyes, a round and ruddy countenance, smallish features, and a peculiar cynical mouth."

There is a small early whole-length portrait of him, engraved many years since, and we remember to have seen Cobbett calling upon a friend, and eating white currants from a cabbageleaf, which he had just bought at a fruit-stall in the street.

In June, 1835, Cobbett was seized with a violent illness, and died in a few days from water in the chest. He was buried, according to his own desire, in a simple manner, in the churchyard of Farnham, in the same mould as that in which his father and grandfather had been laid before him.

It must be added, in his praise, that he is always a hearty Englishman. He may vary in his opinions as to doctrines and as to men, but he is ever for making England great, powerful, and prosperous-her people healthy, brave, and free. He never falls into the error of mistaking political economy for the whole of political science. He does not say, "Be wealthy, make money, and care about nothing else.” He advocates rural pursuits as invigorating to a population, although less profitable than manufacturing. He desires to see Englishmen fit for war as well as for peace. There is none of that puling primness about him which marks the philosophers who would have a great nation, like a good boy at a private school, fit for nothing but obedience and books. To use a slang phrase, there was a go" about him which, despite all his charlatanism, all his eccentricities, kept up the national spirit, and exhibited in this one of the highest merits of political writing. The immense number of all his publications that sold immediately on their appearance, sufficiently proves the wonderful popularity of his style; and it is but just to admit that many of his writings were as useful as popular.

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Sir H. L. Bulwer rates his character thus highly:-" Such was Cobbett-such his career! I have only to add that, in his family relations, this contentious man was kind and gentle. An incomparable husband, an excellent father; and his sons -profiting by an excellent education, and inheriting, not, perhaps, the marvellous energies, but a great portion of the ability, of their father-carry on with credit and respectability the name of a man who, whatever his faults, must be considered by every Englishman who loves our literature, or studies our history, as one of the most remarkable illustrations of his very remarkable time.”