raised. His political opinions had undergone modification; there was not
so much declamation against democracy,--not so much angry zeal for
royalty and the state-church. Nay, he committed the stupendous absurdity
of carrying back with him to England the bones of Tom Paine, as the
grandest gift he could bestow upon his mother-land. No great ovations
greeted this strange luggage of his; I think he was ashamed of it
afterwards,--if Cobbett was ever ashamed of anything. He became
candidate for Parliament in the Liberal interest; he undertook those
famous "Rural Rides" which are a rare jumble of sweet rural scenes and
crazy political objurgation. Now he hammers the "parsons,"--now he tears
the paper-money to rags,--and anon he is bitter upon Malthus, Ricardo,
and the Scotch "Feelosofers,"--and closes his anathema with the charming
picture of a wooded "hanger," up which he toils (with curses on the
road) only to rejoice in the view of a sweet Hampshire valley, over
which sleek flocks are feeding, and down which some white stream goes
winding, and cheating him into a rare memory of his innocent boyhood. He
gains at length his election to Parliament; but he is not a man to
figure well there, with his impetuosity and lack of self-control. He can
talk by the hour to those who feel with him; but to be challenged, to
have his fierce invective submitted to the severe test of an inexorable
logic,--this limits his audacity; and his audacity once limited, his
power is gone.

But I must not forget that I have brought him into my wet-day galaxy as
a farmer. His energy, his promptitude, his habits of thrift, would have
made him one of the best of farmers. His book on gardening is even now
one of the most instructive that can be placed in the hands of a
beginner. He ignores physiology and botany, indeed; he makes crude
errors on this score; but he had an intuitive sense of the right method
of teaching. He is plain and clear, to a comma. He knows what needs to
be told; and he tells it straightforwardly. There is no better model for
agricultural writers than "Cobbett on Gardening." There is no miserable
waste of words,--no indirectness of talk; what he thinks, he prints.

His "Cottage Economy," too, is a book which every small landholder in
America should own; there is a sterling merit in it which will not be
outlived. He made a great mistake, it is true, in insisting that
Indian-corn could be grown successfully in England. But being a man w