By what steps it is needless to trace, Cobbett gradually sidled round, and left the cause of the king for that of the mob. His circumstances became embarrassed, and he fled to America, leaving behind him debts to the value of upwards of £33,000. He resided at Long Island, near New York, and continued to edit his _Register_. In a few years the irrepressible giant—he stood six foot two, with shoulders and chest and girth to match—returned to England. He had once denounced Tom Paine as a miscreant whom no words could blacken. He now brought Tom Paine’s bones with him, bent upon having a grand monument built over them in England. In this instance he signally misunderstood his countrymen. The dead man’s bones were laughed at, and declared to be those of an old nigger. Cobbett proposed to sell 20,000 hair-rings at a sovereign a-piece, with some of Paine’s hair in each; and he was reminded that when Paine died he was almost bald. Cobbett had at last to shuffle the bones underground, no one knows where. His own eloquence and sarcasm made him popular, and procured him a seat in parliament. He was now the fiercest of democrats. He assailed Protestantism and detested ministers of religion. His quackery grew worse and worse until he died in 1835. Sir Francis Chantrey was a poor lad. He began his career by being a carver on wood. Rogers used to say—“One day Chantrey said to him, ‘Do you recollect that about twenty-five years ago a journeyman came to your house from the wood-carver employed by you and Mr. Hope, to talk about these ornaments (pointing to some on a mahogany sideboard), and that you gave him a drawing to execute them by.’ Rogers replied that he recollected it well. ‘Well,’ said Chantrey, ‘I was that journeyman.’” Chantrey practised portrait-painting both at Sheffield and after he came to London. It was in allusion to him that Lawrence said—“A broken-down painter will make a very good sculptor.”