that next to Rochdale it has the most remarkable store in England. It has grown from a house to a street. The library contains upwards of fifteen hundred volumes of new books. The profits for 1876 amounted to eighty-five thousand dollars. The society has an education fund of two thousand dollars per annum. When the Co-operative Congress met at Newcastle in 1873, Mr. Cowen, not then M.P., was elected president, and delivered an address the remembrance of which still lives in co-operative circles.
Mr. Cowen's early education was received at a good local school, whence he proceeded to the University of Edinburgh, which then, by reason of the renown of its professors, enjoyed something like European fame. Russell, Palmerston, Lansdowne, had been there before him. Christopher North still lectured, and Lord Macaulay represented the city in Parliament. With no professional object in view, young Cowen sought simply culture; and that he found to more purpose, perhaps, than it would have been possible for him to do elsewhere. He studied what subjects he pleased, preferring the time-honored classics; became president of the University Debating Society; and entered heartily into the political and social life of the citizens. His chief extra-mural instructor was the Rev. Dr. John Ritchie,—a really great man in a small community. Though a preacher, and a Scottish preacher too, he was above sophistry, an intrepid Radical, and a firstrate platform speaker.
About this time, also, Mr. Cowen, while yet an Edinburgh student, made the acquaintance of Mazzini, who subsequently exercised over him an influence so remarkable. Young as he was, Mr. Cowen had entered an
