“When I afterwards came to teach the English language to French people in Philadelphia, I found that none of the grammars, then to be had, were of much use to me. I found them so defective, that I wrote down instructions and gave them to my scholars in manuscript. At the end of a few months, this became too troublesome; and these manuscript instructions assumed the shape of a grammar in print, the copyright of which I sold to Thomas Bradford,[5] a bookseller in Philadelphia, for 100 dollars (or 22_l._ 11_s._ 6_d._); which grammar, under the title of _Maître d’Anglais_, is now in general use all over Europe.” Cobbett seems to have held a rather qualified opinion upon this French grammar: for he elsewhere says it was “a very hasty production,” and that it was so defective that he was almost ashamed to look into it [1829]; but that it had the great merit of “_clearness_, and of making the learner see the _reason_ of the rules.” Yet the book still holds its own; and it has been repeatedly reprinted in France, Belgium, &c.[6] Besides the teaching of English to the emigrants, there was some translating done for the booksellers. The first of any importance, and which Cobbett alludes to somewhere as his “_coup d’essai_ in the authoring way,” was the work of Von Martens on the “Law of Nations;” at that date a book of considerable authority:-- “Soon after I was married, I translated, for a bookseller in Philadelphia, a book on the Law of Nations. A member of Congress had given the original to the bookseller, wishing for him to publish a translation. The book was the work of a Mr. Martens, a German jurist, though it was written in French. I called it _Martens’s Law of Nations_.… I translated it for a quarter of a dollar (thirteenpence halfpenny) a page; and, as my chief business was to go out in the city to teach French people English, I made it a rule to earn a dollar while my wife was getting the breakfast in the morning, and another dollar after I came home at night, be the hour what it might; and I have earned many a dollar in this way, sitting writing in the same room where my wife and only child were in bed and asleep.” Another task of similar character was the translation of “A Topographical and Political Description of the Spanish part of St. Domingo,” the author of which was Moreau de St. Méry,[7] one of the more distinguished of the French emigrants. This worthy man’s shop, at No. 84, South Front Street, was probably a favourite resort of the _literati_, as he was a person of considerable attainments, and a member of the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia; whilst the bulk of his expatriated fellow-countrymen consisted, without doubt, of a cultivated class of men. Louis Philippe and his brothers were there. Talleyrand was there for a time,[8] and Cobbett recalls the fact, many years after, of having met him in St. Méry’s house.