“The birds sing better, and sing louder, and more, and stronger in a cage, than they do when at large;” adding that “the best pastorals have been written in smoky garrets.” Naturally enough, if a man hath a garden in his own heart. But, in truth, much of Cobbett’s wonderful staying-power lay in his splendid mental and physical health. An active and temperate existence, in which nothing was allowed to run to waste, warded-off the approaches of senility. Excepting only a tumour which gave some trouble for a few months[4] during 1824, he had known nothing of illness; beyond those trifling matters to which even the best constitutions are liable under given circumstances. After reaching his threescore-and-ten, he could still boast of riding over the country with the youngest; or doing a day’s work against any one of his labourers. This was an astonishingly active, fully-worked life; in which nothing of the morbid could possibly find entrance. An early riser, and no lingerer at meals, Cobbett never confessed to having any leisure time. Social pleasures, as such, would seem to have been almost unheeded, if not despised. Yet his hospitality was unbounded, and overflowing with good nature; and he was always at the service of persons who applied to him for advice, or, even, of those nondescript individuals who would claim the privileges of half-acquaintanceship, and call upon him to indulge a sort of curiosity. And, of all this vigour, and heartiness, and true daily purpose, nothing failed, in the green old age of William Cobbett. * * * * *