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JELF-EDUCATION.

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a

people how hey could go to work best, was the secret of 3882
one of the most; important sides of Cobden’s public service. Zr. 28
It was this which, along with his acute political intelligence,
made him so singularly effective. “You tell me,” he wrote
on one occasion to his partner, “ to take time and be comfortable,
 but I fear quiet will not be my lot this trip. 1
sometimes dream of quiet, but then I recollect Byron's
ling, —
Quiet to quick bosoms is a hell,

wd I am afraid he is nearly right in my case.” * Yet this
disquiet never in him degenerated into the sterile bustle
which so many restless spirits have mistaken for practical
energy. Behind all hig sanguine enthusiasm as to public
ands, lay the wisest patience as to means.
What surprises one in reading the letters which Cobden
wrote between 1833 and 1836, is the quickness with which
his character widened and ripened. We pass at a single
step from the natural and wholesome egotism of the young
man who has his bread to win, to the wide interests and
generous public spirit of the good citizen. His first motion
was towards his own intellectual improvement. Even at a
moment when he might readily have been excused for
thinking only of money and muslin, he felt and obeyed the
necessity for knowledge : but of knowledge as an instrument,
 not as a luxury. When he was immersed in the
first pressing anxieties of his new business at Manchester,
he wrote to his brother in London (September, 1832) :—
“Might we not in the winter mstruct ourselves a little in
Mathematics ? If you will call a Longmans and look over
their catalogue, I daresay you might find some popular
slementary publication that would sist us. I have a great
disposition, too, to know , little ” ‘ir. and six months
would suffice if J bad . few books. Can you trust your
¢ To Nv, Foster, May 1-1532.8