WILLIAM COBBETT. 75 



dens of dunces called colleges and universities. It is 

 impossible to say how much I owe to that sand-hill; and I 

 went to return it my thanks for the ability which it probably 

 gave me to be one of the greatest terrors to one ox the 

 greatest and most powerful bodies of knaves and fools 

 that ever were permitted to afflict this or any other 

 country.' 



Breakfasting at a little village in Sussex, he looks with fond 

 complacency upon the landlady's son : ' A very pretty village, 

 and a very nice breakfast, in a very neat parlour of a very 

 decent public-house. The landlady sent her son to get me 

 some cream ; and he was just such a chap as I was at his 

 age, and dressed just in the same sort of way, his main 

 garment being a blue smock-frock, faded from wear, and 

 mended with pieces of new stuff, and, of course, not faded. 

 The sight of this smock-frock brought to my recollection 

 many things very dear to me.' This is as fine as Burns 

 gazing upon the cottage smoke in his morning walk to 

 Blackford Hill with Dugald Stewart. One anecdote of his 

 boyhood, related by himself, is so amusingly characteristic of 

 the future man, that we have never forgotten it. He was 

 not permitted to follow the hounds upon some occasion, and, 

 in revenge, procured a salt herring, which he furtively drew 

 over the ground where they were to throw off, thus to cast 

 them off the scent. The trick took to admiration, and the 

 boy as much exulted in his success as did the man in 

 tne discomfiture of his enemies, EUenborough and Vickary 

 Gibbs. 



In the introduction to one of his most delightful books, — 

 next, indeed, to the Rural Rtdes,— namely, his Year's Residence 

 in Ameiica, he says : — ■ 



