, at the end of it, to mount a hill called Hungry
Hill; and from that hill I knew that I should look down into the
beautiful and fertile vale of Farnham. My heart fluttered with
impatience, mixed with a sort of fear, to see all the scenes of my
childhood; for I had learned before the death of my father and
mother. There is a hill not far from the town, called Crooksbury
Hill, which rises up out of a flat in the form of a cone, and is
planted with Scotch fir-trees. Here I used to take the eggs and
young ones of crows and magpies. This hill was a famous object in
the neighbourhood. It served as the superlative degree of height.
'As high as Crooksbury Hill,' meant with us, the utmost degree of
height. Therefore, the first object my eyes sought was this hill.
I could not believe my eyes! Literally speaking, I for a moment
thought the famous hill removed, and a little heap put in its
stead; for I had seen in New Brunswick a single rock, or hill of
solid rock, ten times as big, and four or five times as high! The
post-boy, going down hill, and not a bad road, whisked me in a few
minutes to the Bush Inn, from the garden of which I could see the
prodigious sand hill where I had begun my gardening works. What a
nothing! But now came rushing into my mind all at once my pretty
little garden, my little blue smock-frock, my little nailed shoes,
my pretty pigeons that I used to feed out of my hands, the last
kind words and tears of my gentle and tender-hearted and
affectionate mother. I hastened back into the room. If I had
looked a moment longer, I should have dropped. When I came to
reflect, what a change! What scenes I had gone through! How
altered my state! I had dined the day before at a secretary of
state's, in company with Mr. Pitt, and had been waited upon by men
in gaudy liveries! I had had nobody to assist me in the world. No
teachers of any sort. Nobody to shelter me from the consequence of
bad, and nobody to counsel me to good behaviour. I felt proud. The
distinctions of rank, birth, and wealth, all became nothing in my
eyes; and from that moment (less than a month after my arrival in
England), I resolved never to bend before them."

Cobbett was, for a short time, a labourer in the kitchen grounds of the
Royal Gardens at Kew. King George the Third often visited the gardens
to inquire after th