208

LIFE O™ [OBDEN,

{omar

1841. which they close, in the lines in which Cowper anticipated
~ a7, the hich economic doctrine se.

Again—the band of commerce wag design’d,
To associate all the branches of mankind,
And if a boundless plenty be the robe,
Trade is the golden Girdle of the globe.
Wise to promote whatever end he means,
Bod opens fruitful Nature’s various scenes,
Bach climate needs what other climes produce,
And offers something to the general use 3
No land but listens to the common call,
And in return receives supply from all,
This genial intercourse and mutual sid
Cheers what were else an universal shade,
Calls Nature from her ivy-mantled den,
And softens human rock-work into men.

From Cowper, too, he was never weary of quoting the
lines about Liberty :—

Tis liberty alone that gives the flower
If fleeting life its lustre and perfume,
And we are weeds without it. All constraint
Fixcept what wisdom lays on evil men
Ia evil.

It was this association of solid doctrine with genial enshusiasm
 and high ideals, that distinguished Cobden from too
many preachers of what our humourist has called the gospel
according to McCrowdy. It was this kindly imaginativeness
 in him which caught men’s hearts. His ideals were
constantly sneered at as low, material, common, unworthy,
especially by the class whose lives are one long course of
indolence, dilettanteism, and sensuality. George Combe
‘lls how one evening in 1852 he was in the drawingroom
 of some great lady, who, amid the applause of her
friends, denounced Cobden’s policy as never rising beyond
» mere “ bagman’s millennium.” This wag the clever way,
among the selfish and insolent, of saying that the ideal

5 Life of George Combe, ii, 809.