later period of his life to enter upon new fields of action, or to give utterance to views on subjects not strictly within the range of effort he had marked out for himself; but he had a lively sense of the evils of intemperance, had witnessed too many of its fearful results, and felt too strongly the barrier it raised up to advancement and reform among the labouring classes, to pass by lightly any measure which offered effectually to oppose a check. His notions of liberty were enlarged but subdued, and there can be no doubt that in a short time, had he lived, he would have arrayed his name with those who would give to the majority of the people power to put down the public or private sale of intoxicating liquors. We have reasons to believe this from the tone of his remarks when the subject was brought under his notice.

It is not within our province to enter upon all the views of Richard Cobden. In this imperfect sketch we have done sufficient to vindicate his character, and to prove that he was truly a great man, cherishing from his youth great aims, and stimulated by a noble ambition. We have shown that the first programme of his principles was rigidly adhered to, and most faithfully carried out in his later career; that he went through a severe conflict, in which he had to encounter much hostility, but was never diverted from the object in view; and that he came out of it unscathed and with untarnished reputation. Amongst the many charges brought against him, he was never accused of tergiversation, of untruthfulness, or of personal rancour. In the proudest hour of his triumphs, as in the severest hour of his struggles, he retained the same simplicity of manner, the same kindness of speech and geniality of tone which ever distinguished him. In his public life he scarcely made an enemy; in his private life he never lost a friend. We will not intrude into that household which is sacred by its sorrows, by an attempt to show how much he was beloved by his own family, how much that love was merited, and how warmly it was returned. It is remarkable that Bastiat, his friend-the man who in France had done so much for free trade principles, was a man of like simplicity of character, equally beloved by those who knew him best, equally mourned by the great bulk of the men who had become disciples to the doctrines he taught, and perished by a discase very kindred to that which destroyed Mr. Cobden.

It remains for us now to ask, in relation to the greathearted man who has been taken from us, wherein the secret of his power, and of his success? This inquiry will lead us once more to look at the man in his daily walk and conversation. He said that his mother was a woman of great energy

of

of character, and for a moment we may pause upon that remark to gather from it the lesson it conveys. Many great men have borne testimony to the same thing, and Napoleon the First said, at St. Helena, I owe all my greatness to my mother.' What Richard Cobden might owe to his mother will never be known, nor could it be estimated; but the simple testimony to that mother's character leads us to the great truth that women are, after all, the educators of the young, and that in the vast majority of cases the direction so important to the future life is given to the mind before it leaves the mother's care. Let the men who build up systems of education look to this. Are the women amongst us in any class of society better fitted for the great duty which Almighty God has committed to them to discharge, the care and culture of the young, in this generation, than they were in the last? Has not prosperity brought with it new desires and new aspirations, and has not a love of ease, of luxury, and pleasure taken possession of the young of both sexes? This is our great danger. The great men of all ages have been men of humble desires and hardy habits. Such men build up States; the men who destroy them are those who yield to voluptuousness and false refinement. Let us learn from the life of Richard Cobden to what a large extent. the truest greatness is compatible with perfect simplicity of character.

It is clear that Cobden fixed upon a sphere of study in his youth. Many great geniuses have worn out their lives, and have left this world without achieving any worthy result, from having started without fixed aim or well defined purpose. They have aspired to many things and achieved success in none. Cobden's first letters prove the man. They manifest fixed views and settled resolves. No man of the present day changed his opinions less in the process of time; not that it is discreditable or a proof of weakness to abandon an old opinion for a new one ;-it is more often a proof of strength of character;-but Cobden came into the public field after many years of patient reading, after much intercourse with men, and with his practical and sagacious mind well stored with facts and the fruits of study-all logically arranged and ready for use. The great feature of his mental character was persistency, and he possessed this faculty to as great an extent as any living man. It is the faculty of men who become the leaders of great parties, and of bodies of men. It enabled him to fasten his mind upon an idea until he had mastered it; upon a principle until he had examined it in all its parts. This endowment is conspicuous in his early works, but nowhere so remarkable as in the speeches referred to by

us.

us.

They are all complete pieces of argumentation. There is no parenthesis nor single sentence that does not bear upon the principle he intends to establish. No speaker is more clear, or more connected in the chain of reasoning. He never steps out of the way to borrow an illustration, and will scarcely employ it if it lies right in the path. He has been pronounced destitute of imagination, and those who judge of him by his writings may be excused for coming to such a conclusion, for no man was less poetical in public. He employed none of the arts of rhetoric, no florid declamation, and the perorations to his addresses were not relieved either by brilliant quotation or even by elevation of his own style, and seldom by increased earnestness of manner. And yet his speeches told powerfully-whether delivered in Parliament among statesmen and educated men, among merchants and tradesmen at the London Tavern, or among a mixed assembly at the Free Trade Hall. He fixed his audience at once, he kept them in hand, but never wearied them. He always satisfied them that he was in earnest, and that he spoke from a mastery of his subject-two great essentials before an English audience, and every sentence he uttered was felt to be part of the subject before him. His style was so clear that it required no effort to understand him, and his manner so impressive that no sense of weariness was felt under him. The faculty referred to was, therefore, one of the main elements of his success. It enabled him in early life to hit upon a congenial course of study and action, and in after life to steadily pursue it, and to give that quality to his speeches and writings which made them so instructive and attractive. With his high moral and intellectual faculties this ability of persistence gave him that tenacity of purpose and inflexibility of principle which was after all the great secret of his power among his countrymen. This lesson is taught by his life to the young man emulous to obtain an honourable and useful position:Be careful to select a pursuit suitable to your talents and congenial to your inclinations, and then steadily follow it and qualify yourself for it; the proper field for employment will always be found.

But Richard Cobden was not destitute of imagination. He delighted in the fields and lanes, and among the beauties of nature. He could admire the humblest as well as the greatest of her works. Goldwin Smith records a remark which shows this, if there were not other instances: There are two sublimities in nature,' he said, 'one of rest and the other of motion-the distant Alps and Niagara.' His lively conversation exhibited a kindly appreciation of what is good

in human nature, and a love of what is beautiful in the world at large, but his imagination was kept in subordination to his other faculties. There was another element of power in his public addresses, and this arose from his implicit confidence in the ultimate triumph of sound principles. He had faith in the inherent power of truth, and a generous and confiding trust in humanity. He always treated his audience with respect, appealing to them as reasonable men who were capable of understanding a plain argument if properly placed before them. He flattered no prejudice, pandered to no passion, resorted to no artifice, insinuated no subtlety. It was a theory of his that the popular heart is always sound, and that if it be not reached it is because the attempt has not been made in the right way. There is wisdom in this. No man will succeed in impressing others who is not in earnest himself; and no man will be eminently successful as a teacher who undervalues the truths he expounds, or who has a mean opinion intellectually and morally of those he addresses. The man who does not appeal to the higher faculties of his auditors to the heart and conscience-may, for practical purposes, as well hold his peace.

Richard Cobden died in the path of duty. He felt great interest in the question as to the defences of Canada, and left his home at Dunford for London, with the view of speaking in the debate. The day was most inclement, a day on which men in robust health take journeys only on the most urgent business, and observing great precautions. He found on his arrival in London that he was unable from illness to attend the House of Commons, and had to retire to his lodgings in Suffolk-street, from which he was in a few weeks taken out a corpse. Of him it may be said, as he said of Bastiat, The death of such a man, under such circumstances, is full of melancholy interest, but teaches a sublime lesson. The incidents of his death will add emphasis to his teachings. The people among whom he lived, and for whose enlightenment and prosperity he laboured, will better understand how much he was their benefactor, how much more so than some of the men whom a false notion of glory has inspired them to worship.'

The character of a man like Richard Cobden is soon summed up. He had native talents, both intellectual and moral, of a high order, and well calculated for the career he marked out for himself. In early youth he began to cultivato these faculties, and to mature his mind for the great struggle of life. He sought out a field of action congenial to his inclinations, and, having fixed his aim, steadily pursued it

through

through good and through ill report. It was his lot to achieve a large measure of success, and to die amidst the fulness of promise of a still greater success. This is alike the lesson and the moral-a career active, earnest, enterprising, divested of all sordid ambition; and a death mourned by the good of all countries. In his case he had not to pine under a sense of wasted or unrequited or fruitless labour, nor did he meet a grudging and niggard reward. Let the youth of England study the man and his life and labours over his simple grave. He served his generation with all his might, and nobly have they discharged their pious duty to his memory.

ABT. VI.-MAT MAHONEY'S FIDELITY; AND WHAT CAME OF IT.

VER

I.

VERY picturesque and peaceful looked a certain little town in Devonshire, in the mellow September moonlight of many autumns ago. It was an oldfashioned, straggling town, with here and there a strange gabled, bow-windowed house, standing up between the more modern buildings as if to remind the observer of the antiquity of the place. Its business and other affairs were conducted in a fussy, consequential kind of way, as if there was no town in all the land so important as this prim, insignificant little town.

The hour was nine: the clock of the Parish Church had just struck in tones not the most silvery. Perhaps the extreme quiet of the place made them seem to clang rather harshly. Through the silent streets a vehicle was a rare thing to be heard at this time, and the voices and footsteps of the few pedestrians sounded audible enough. Most of the shops were closed, excepting here and there a huckster's, and the public-houses, which were neither few nor far between. From them gaslight streamed out on to the pavement, and struggled with the purer moonlight. The street lamps were not lighted; the town authorities were economical souls, that could not conscientiously give the folks gas when they had the moon to 1ghten their darkness withal.

However, the authorities were kinder than they meant to be in turning off the gas, for the picturesque effect of the moonlight on the old town was heightened, not marred, by the absence of artificial light.

There was many a lighted windowblind, though, behind which well-to-do folks were holding social gatherings; and many a lighted window without blinds, through which the passer-by might see the thrifty cottager at her lace-making, or engaged with her household jewels, the merry children.

Along a street mainly occupied by these humble folks, a tall, portly, aristocratic-looking man strode with firm, measured steps.

Now and then he turned his stately grey head and looked in at these uncovered windows, as a fire gleam or the more sober glow of candles attracted his eye; and when he saw the women so peacefully engaged with their lace, or heard the rippling of childish laughter, he sighed and said to himself, 'How happy the simple cottagers are in their humble homes! fathers and wives and children, how happy they are! How little could they imagine or understand how desolate I-'

He had just turned into the principal street, and, as if to give the lie to his unspoken words about the happiness of the poor, the first thing that met his view was a man bending over the insensible form of a woman on a doorstep. He was uttering plaintive ejaculations, and words of entreaty and coaxing.

'What's the matter with the woman?' asked the gentleman, standing and planting his silver-headed walking-stick firmly on the pavement.

'Och, yer honour, there's somethin' the matter intirely, as yer honour can see, but it's not for myself to be pratin'

out