wise have possessed. It made it more easy for him to believe himself capable of understanding and teaching all that it was necessary for men to know. In addition to his writings in America, which of themselves fill ten or twelve volumes—to his Weekly Register, extending over thirty-five years; to his laborious "Parliamentary Register;" to his work on the Currency; to his "Protestant Reformation," and to his Sermons—he wrote a series of educational works. Beginning with the child, he published a really interesting spelling-book; grammars not only of the English, but also of the French and Italian languages; a geographical dictionary of England and Wales; and several histories, among which we find a Roman history in two volumes. When his pupils had passed from the schoolroom to the business of life he followed them as their daily Mentor. His "Advice to Young Men, and incidentally to Young Women" is full of valuable suggestions, conveyed in a most original way, on the choice of a profession, the temptations of youth, self-culture, love-making, marriage, rearing and educating children, and the duties of citizens. Of this work it is impossible to speak too highly. It is wholesome food, served up in the best style, every dish being flavoured with the purveyor's own piquant sauce. But to the improvement of the small farmers and rural labourers, his peculiar people, the class from whence he sprang, he devoted all his powers. For the labourers he wrote his "Poor Man's Friend," his "Cottage Economy," and his "Legacy to Labourers;" while the higher price of his "English Gardener," his "Woodlands," and his edition of "Tull's Husbandry" mark them out as intended for the farmers.
Such was the versatility of his genius that he attempted a comedy. In a laughable little play, entitled "Surplus Population: a Comedy in Three Acts," he ridicules the Malthusian theories. The principal characters are Sir Gripe Grindum, the squire; Peter Thimble, Esq., a great anti-population philosopher; and Dick Hazle, a labourer, in love with Betsy Birch, one of a family of seventeen.
Not a page of his books, however uninteresting the subject may be to the ordinary reader, can be called dry. Cobbett has the wondrous art of making the most ponderous subject light reading.
