LIFE OF COBDEN.

[omar.

1825. by which the desire to learn was gradually directed and
ir. 2).. configured.
The information to be gathered in coaches and in the
commercial rooms of provincial hotels was narrow enough
‘n some senses, but it was varied, fresh, and in real matter.
To a man of Cobden’s active and independent intelligence
this contact with such a diversity of interest and character
was a congenial process of education. Harsh circumstance
had left no other education open to him. There is something
 pathetic in an exclamation of one of his letters of this
period, not merely because it concerns a man of Cobden’s
eminence and public service, but because it is the case of
thousands of less conspicuous figures. In his first journey
‘ August—October, 1825) he was compelled to wait for half
a day at Shrewsbury, for a coach to Manchester. He went
bo the abbey, and was greatly impressed by its venerable
walls and painted glass. “Oh that I had money,” he says to
his brother, in plain uncultured speech, to be deep skilled
in the mysteries of mullions and architraves, in lieu of black
and purple and pin grounds! How happy I should be.”
He felt as keenly as Byron himself how

The lore
Jf mighty minds doth hallow in the core
Jf human hearts the ruin of a wall,
Where dwalt the wizsa and wondrous.

R98.

Tn his second journey he visited the birthplace of Robert
Burns, and he wrote to his brother from Aberdeen (Feb. 5,
1826) :=—“ It is a sort of gratification that I am sure you can
imagine, but which I cannot describe, to feel conscious of
treading upon the same spot of earth, of viewing the same
surrounding objects, and of being sheltered by the same roof,
ps one who equally astonished and delighted the world.”
He describes himself as boiling over with enthusiasm upon
approaching  Alloway’s auld haunted kirk,” the brig o’