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Temple chambers, or a publisher’s anteroom, or the com- Zr. 24
mercial parlour of some provincial Crown or Unicorn.
“During the time we have been here,” Cobden wrote from
Manchester, while affairs were still unsettled, ‘we have been
in a state of suspense, and you would be amused to see us
buat for one day. Oh, sucha change of moods! This moment
we are all jocularity and laughter, and the next we are mute
ns fishes and grave as owls. To do ourselves justice, I must
say that our croakings do not generally last more than five
winutes.”
Intense anxiety for the success of the undertaking was
brightened by modest hopes of profits, of which a share of
one third should amount to eight hundred pounds a year.
And in Cobden’s case these hopes received a suffusion of
generous colour from the prospect which they opened to his
affectionate solicitude for his family. “I knew your heart
well enough,’ he wrote to his brother Frederick, “ to feel that
there is a large portion of it ever warmly devoted to my
interests, and I should be doing injustice to mine if I did not
tell you that I have not one ambitious view or hope from
which you stand separated. I feel that Fortune, with her
nsual caprice, has in dealing with us turned her face to the
least deserving, but we will correct her mistake for once, and
I must insist that you from henceforth consider yourself as
by right my associate in all her favours.”—(Sept. 21,
1828.)
The important thing is that all this is no mere coinage of
fair words, but the expression i « deep and genuine intention
which was amply and most diligently fulfilled to the very
last hour of Cobden’s life.
1820