CobbetCs Opinion. Ji 



a local guide-book, that we might cull for you the proper 

 quotations therefrom. It consists of 148 pages, mostly 

 given up to notices of the titled people who visited the 

 old town long ago ; but who cares about them ? Here, 

 however, is something of more interest than all those no- 

 bodies. Cobbett says of Guildford, in his " Rural Rides :" 



" I, who have seen so many towns, think this the 

 prettiest and most happy looking I ever saw in my 

 life." There's praise for you ! But, then, he had never 

 seen Dunfermline. Here is a characteristic touch of 

 that rare, horse-sense kind of a man. He is enraptured 

 over the vale of Chilworth. 



" Here, in this tranquil spot, where the nightingales 

 are to be heard earlier and later in the year than in any 

 other part of England, where the first budding of the 

 trees is seen in the spring, where no rigor of seasons can 

 ever be felt, where everything seems framed for pre- 

 cluding the very thought of wickedness — this has the 

 devil fixed on as one of his seats of his grand manufac- 

 tory, and perverse and even ungrateful man not only 

 lends his aid, but lends it cheerfully." 



Since those days, friend Cobbett, the devil has much 

 enlarged his business in gunpowder and bank notes, of 

 which you complain. He was only making a start when 

 you wrote. The development of manufactures in 

 America (under a judicious tariff, be it reverently 

 spoken), amazing as it has been, and carried on as a 

 rule by the saints, is slow work compared with what his 



