Let us now turn to a master of homely English—a man whose name was, at one time, in every one’s mouth, and an author, whose books, at one time, every one read. His moral works excel in descriptive power. In politics his savage personalities encircle sarcasm; his faculty for inventing national nick-names, and mastery of a Saxon style of inimitable raciness, have given his writings historical reputation. He has never been equalled among political writers in his capacity of explaining what he understood. He was the first journalist who called attention to the condition of the working classes, I mean William Cobbett. William Cobbett was born at Farnham, in Surrey, in 1776. His father was a very poor farmer, who knew enough to teach his boys to read, and had enough of intellectual originality to think that the triumph of Washington in the American War of Independence was just. William began as a mere child to do something towards earning his own livelihood, and took great delight in the flowers which, while weeding in great folks’ gardens, he saw. When eleven years old, he heard some one speak of the splendid flowers in the Royal Gardens at Kew. Without a word of announcement, and with sixpence-halfpenny in his pocket, he set off to seek employment in that irresistible Paradise. When he reached Richmond his funds were reduced to threepence, and he was very hungry. In a shop-window, however, he saw the “Tale of a Tub,” price threepence. Mind triumphed over body; he bought the tale; and sat under a hay-stack reading it till he fell asleep. He was delighted beyond measure with the piece, and continued to read and re-read it for many years. The circumstance was not of happy omen. Swift’s terrible tale we should pronounce to be as well-fitted to sap the moral and religious principles of a lad as any book in the English language; and lack of moral principle was the fatal defect of Cobbett throughout life.