neers to give, and sat, as I heard a member remark, "a
group fit for the pencil of Retzsch, fresh from its delineations of
Mephistopheles." I need not write upon the page which mentions Richard
Cobden their names, which, to reverse Palmerston's praise, are engraved
only upon the least creditable pages of the history of their own or of
others' countries.

When John Bright sat down, some minds were borne back over eight years
when Cobden was addressing a large public meeting without the presence
of his usual companion. Mr. Bright was then in the far South, in
consequence of ill-health of a character to excite grave apprehension
among his friends. During his address, Mr. Cobden, having occasion to
allude to his absent friend, was so overpowered by his feelings that he
could not proceed for several minutes; and rarely has a great audience
been so deeply moved as was that by this emotion in one to whose heart,
true and ruddy, any sentimentality was unattributable.

To write the history of this friendship between Bright and Cobden, to
tell how the sturdy hearts of these strong men became riveted to each
other, would be to record the best pages of recent English history. For
these men joined hands at the altar of a noble cause; and their souls
have been welded in the fires of a fierce and unceasing struggle for
humanity.

Richard Cobden was born near Midhurst, Sussex, at his father's
farm-house, Dunford, June 3, 1804. His father was one of the class who
regarded the repeal of the Corn Laws as identical with their ruin. Young
Richard was at an early age placed in a London warehouse, where he so
pressed every leisure moment of his time into the acquisition of
information that his employer reproved him with a warning that lads so
fond of reading were apt to spoil their prospects. (This old gentleman
afterwards became unfortunate, and the young man he had thus warned
contributed fifty pounds for his comfort every year until his death.)
There has been some attempt on the part of certain persons, who have
never forgiven Mr. Cobden for their being in the wrong in the matter of
the Corn Laws, to sneer at him as an uncultivated man. This was, of
course, to be expected by one who made all the old bones in the
scholastic coffins at Oxford rattle again and again, by declaring that
he regarded "a single copy of the 'Times' newspaper as of more
importance than all the works of Thucydides,"--a thing which he has for
some years been willin