74 WILLIAM COBBETT. 



John, this is a fine place to talk treason in ; " to which Thelwall re- 

 plied, " Nay, Citizen Samuel, it is rather a place to make a man 

 forget that there is any necessity for treason." This was a touching 

 and a beautiful expression : it developed a fine perception of the 

 harmonies of nature ; and when we convey ourselves with Cobbett, 

 from his den in Bolt Court to his farm, we feel that it is an ex- 

 pression which might rise to his lips in reference to his own political 

 struggles. We confess that we sympathised with the feelings he 

 must have had, when he desired that he might be carried out into 

 the open air, once more to inhale its fragrance, and once more to 

 witness operations to which he was passionately devoted. There 

 is more poetry in these feelings than we are willing to attribute to 

 characters like Cobbett, and they bring him to us in a more softened 

 form than as a coarse and oftentimes intemperate public man. The 

 words placed by Bulwer in the mouth of his dying friend might, if 

 freed from their sickly sentimentality, have proceeded from Cobbett, 

 on his death-bed. " Have I no farewell for that nature, whom, 

 perhaps, I behold for the last time ? O, unseen spirit of Creation ! 

 that watchest over all things, thou gavest me music in the mountain 

 wind ! thou badest the flowers and the common grass smile up to 

 me ! I thank thee, Nature, that thou art round me at the last ! 

 Farewell, thou, and thy thousand ministrants, and children ! every 

 leaf that quivers on the bough, every dew-drop that sparkles on the 

 grass, every breeze that animates the earth, are to me as friends ! " 



We have said not a word of the man as exhibited in his everyday 

 affairs : we have viewed him apart from party ; we have placed 

 aside our conventional prejudices ; we have taken him in the noblest 

 aspect of his nature ; and we, who have struggled with him in life, 

 thus record our opinions. Let his errors, his contradictions, and his 

 occasional uncharitableness die with him : if he has done injury, the 

 vigorous arm that inflicted it is powerless ; let us repair the mischief, 

 let us balance the good and the evil, and let us try whether the 

 sword that wounded may not be made a means of healing. We 

 loved not the man when living ; but God forbid that we should do 

 dishonour to his memory when dead ! 



