s Cobbett saw it,
with the pale distances of eight counties on his horizon, and the dark,
tall chimneys of the powdermills he detested smoking below him. "Here we
looked back over Middlesex," he writes, "and into Buckinghamshire and
Berkshire, away towards the north-west, into Essex and Kent towards the
east, over part of Sussex to the south, and over part of Hampshire to
the west south-west." He might have added Oxfordshire. Nothing in Surrey
delighted Cobbett more than "the narrow and exquisitely beautiful vale
of Chilworth," at which he used to gaze from these downs. Only Hawkley
Hanger, just over the Hampshire border, filled him with greater
pleasure. But the Chilworth powdermills goaded him to fury:--

"This valley," he writes, white hot, "which seems to have been created
by a bountiful providence, as one of the choicest retreats of man; which
seems formed for a scene of innocence and happiness, has been, by
ungrateful man, so perverted as to make it instrumental in effecting two
of the most damnable of purposes; in carrying into execution two of the
most damnable inventions that ever sprang from the minds of man under
the influence of the devil! namely, the making of _gunpowder_ and of
_bank-notes_! 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 bursting of the bud is seen in spring, where no
rigour of seasons can ever be felt; where everything seems formed for
precluding the very thought of wickedness; here has the devil fixed on
as one of the seats of his grand manufactory; and perverse and
ungrateful man not only lends him aid, but lends it cheerfully! As to
the gunpowder, indeed, we might get over that. In some cases that may be
innocently and, when it sends the lead at the hordes that support a
tyrant, meritoriously employed. The alders and the willows, therefore,
one can see, without so much regret, turned into powder by the waters of
this valley; but, the _Bank-notes_! To think that the springs which God
has commanded to flow from the sides of these happy hills for the
comfort and the delight of man; to think that these springs should be
perverted into means of spreading misery over a whole nation and that,
too, under the base and hypocritical pretence of promoting its _credit_
and maintaining its _honour_ and its _faith_! There was one
circumstance, indeed, that served to mitigate the melancholy excited by