THR DISASTERS OF 1826.

i”

In the same lester he congratulates himself on having
been fortunate emough, when he strolled into the Court
of Session, to see Jeffery, Cockburn, and Sir Walter Scott.
One cannot pass the mention of the last and greatest of
the three——the bravest, soundest-hearted, and most lovable
of men,—without noting that this day, when Cobden saw
him, wag only removed by three weeks from “that awful
Seventeenth of January,” when Scott received the staggering
 blow of desperate and irretrievable ruin. It was only
ten days before that he had gone .to the Court for the first
time, and like the man with the large nose, thought that
everybody was thinking of him and his mishaps.”
This, in fact, was the hour of ome of the most widely
disastrous of those financial crashes which sweep over the
Country from time to time like great periodic storms. The
fain of 1825 and 1826 was never forgotten by those who
hed intelligence enough to be alive to what was going on
before their eyes. The whirlwind that shook the fabric of
Scott’s prosperity to the ground, involved Cobden’s humbler
fortunes in a less imposing catastrophe. His employers
failed (February, 1826), as did so many thousands of others,
and he was obliged to spend some time in unwelcome holiday
at Westmeon.
Affairs were as straitened under his father’s roof as they
had always been. The sun was not likely to be shining
in that little particular spot, if the general sky were dull.
The perturbations of the great ocean were felt even in that
Small circle, and while retail customers at their modest shop
Were reluctant to buy or unable to pay, the wholesale provider
 in London was forced to narrow his credit and call in
his debts. The family stood closely to one another in the
midst of a swarm of shabby embarrassments, and their neigh~
bours looked on in friendly sympathy, impotent to help.
Strangely enough, as some may think, they do not seem to

1826.
Ar, 22.