I was in Lavington Churchyard when Cobden was buried. On our walk from the station there, Mr. Gladstone, who was before me, turned round to shake hands with a friend. I saw at once that he was a Lancashire man, which had never struck me before. He shook hands from the shoulder, which I had observed Lancashire men did. In the churchyard I lingered behind, and stood within a clump of trees overlooking the grave. When Mr. Bright, who had left the other mourners, came there himself, I moved noiselessly away. He remained alone, looking down on the last resting-place of his star-bright colleague in counsel and in fight. Cobden excelled among politicians of the people in enthusiasm of the intellect. He regarded strong, lucid argument as the omnipotent force of progress. When one morning the news came, "_Cobden is dead_" it was felt in every workshop in the land that a great power for peace and industry was lost to the nation. His disciples have grown with succeeding years, and if he be regarded as the founder of a school, no nobler one exists among politicians. He laid the foundations of Free Trade, not only for Manchester, but for the world. As Mr. Morley tells us in his great "Life," Mr. Gladstone "ranked the introduction of cheap postage for letters, documents, patterns, and printed matter, and the abolition of all taxes on printed matter as in the catalogue of Free Trade legislation." "These great measures," says Mr. Morley, "may well take their place beside the abolition of prohibitions and protective duties, the simplifying of revenue laws, and the repeal of the Navigation Act" These were all Cobden's ideals. Most of them he called into being, and he was the principal enchanter who gave them a local habitation and a name. As with the "Manchester School," so with the term "Manchester men," it is used with a geographical indefiniteness; as when we speak of any one belonging to a shire instead of a town. Hence Cobden, who was a Midhurst man, and Bright, who was a Rochdale man, are taken as typical "Manchester men." As few readers have any definite idea of what a "Manchester man" of the nobler sort individually is, I give a brief biography of one of the most influential of them, who might be regarded as the founder of the Cobden School.