Sussex, among the Downs, and along the shore,
in the first week of February, the snowdrops
and crocuses glinted up in the gardens, and
the skylarks, with beating wings and ecstatic
carols, mounted straight up into the sky.
Polyanthuses, anemone hypaticas, and blue and
purple anemones, bloomed in the middle of the
month. The first of the foreign singers, the
chaffinch, came and warbled beautifully on the
top twigs of leafless trees. The greater titmouse
made himself heard about West Sussex homes
by his two rasping notes, which seem borrowed
from the whetting of a scythe. Where there
were many trees and shrubs, amidst chirps and
warblings, the tree-larks trilled, the thrushes
whistled, and sanguine sufferers from bronchitis
believed their throats had escaped from the
gripe of this deadliest of the garotters. Relying
on the apparent arrival of spring, Mr. Cobden,
one of thousands of invalid prisoners during the
winter, left his sheltered home at Dunford among
the Downs, where "he had waited for finer
weather," and whilst travelling to London was
caught by four degrees of frost. Never strong,
overworked all his life, often wounded in
political strife, never having recovered the loss of
his only boy, in his public zeal addressing his
constituents too late in the year, and leaving
his home too early in the spring to speak in
parliament, the cold overpowered the heat in his
overworn frame, and on the sunny but chilly
morning of the 2nd of April, while the church
bells were ringing, Richard Cobden was expiring
in his chambers in Suffolk-street, London.

On the following Wednesday his remains were
taken from London back to Dunford. He had
built a mansion with a square tower on the site
of his father's farm-house, preserving, however,
one room of the old house, his mother's
bedroom. Richard Cobden was a West Sussex
man. Worthing, Littlehampton, Bognor, and
Chichester, are built on a flat tract of clay land
stretching some thirty miles along the shore,
and sometimes as many as ten or a dozen miles
from the foot of the chalky Downs to the shingle
of the coast. Chichester is, like Brighton, close
to the Downs, only in a valley a few miles from
the sea, instead of being, like Brighton (the
successor of a town washed away by the sea), built
for refuge upon the slopes and cliffs of the
Downs. Chichester is a cathedral and agricultural
city, the rest are esplanaded bathing towns.
On the northern side of the Downs of West
Sussex are the agricultural towns of Horsham,
Petworth, Midhurst, and Steyning. At the
east end of the county of Sussex, it is important
to remember, Saxon Harold was defeated by
Norman William, and lordly castles and lowly
thatched cottages, although several of the castles
are now in ruins, and many of the sea-side
villages have been swept away by the sea, still
maintain the traditions of the victors and the
victims of the battle of Hastings. The Cobdens,
or Cobbys, are common in West Sussex chiefly
as labouring or serving people. Inhabitants of
West Sussex who read newspapers knew that
Richard Cobden the member lived near
Midhurst, but among the large majority who do not
read, or cannot read newspapers, the best known
Mr. Cobden was an innkeeper at Halnaker.
Yet here Cobdens owned land and tilled it long
before any temporal or spiritual barons erected
castles to overawe the despoiled and oppressed
Saxons.

Deeply engraven in the heart of Richard
Cobden was the impression of the fact that
his forefathers had owned Dunford, and had,
by misfortune and fault, by weakness and
simplicity of their own, or by the superior
cunning of others, seen it pass away from them.
His voice became plaintive on this theme. A
Saxon, born under the cold shades of feudal
baronries, Selsey, Leconfield, Winterton,
Richmond, Arundel, where tenancy is but leave to
toil for another, and enfranchisement only
permission to vote as bidden, Richard Cobden
imbibed from the lessons of his home his deep
disgust and dislike of the aristocracy. Historical
researches never occupied him very much, or
else what was excessive in his hatred might have
been corrected somewhat by simply visiting the
eastern capital of his county and surveying the
field of the battle of Lewes, if only from the
tower of the castle, and studying the heroic
struggle in which De Montford fought for parliament
against kingcraft. But no men hate
landlords like farmers' sons; and Cæsar, the laird's
dog, is made by Robert Burns to tell Luath, the
cottar's dog, what, I believe, is the reason why:

     Poor tenant bodies scant o' cash,
     How they maun thole a factor's snash,
     He'll stamp, an' threaten, curse and swear,
     He'll apprehend them, poind their gear,—
     While they maun stan, wi' aspect humble
     An hear it a' an' fear an' tremble.

Democracy is a plant which grows in
aristocratic soil.

The West Sussex men might be divided into
Lowlanders and Highlanders, although all of
one race and language, and Mr. Cobden's parish,
Heyshot, called a Highland parish; for it lies
among the very highest of the round broad-
shouldered hills or mountains separating North
from South Sussex. There is now a good road
from Chichester to Midhurst over these hills;
and the first sod of a railway has just been
cut. When Richard Cobden was a little boy, a
near connexion of mine used to visit the rector
and squire of Trotton, the adjoining parish to
Heyshot, shooting with his friend Twyford the
clergyman, whilst the squire and his son hunted.
There was then only a by-road from Midhurst
to Petersfield. Newspapers were then so seldom
seen in the neighbourhood that the squire
did not know the name of the prime minister.
This fact means, that the weak had no protection,
against the strong from publicity, and but little
from law.

The temperature of the week preceding the
Sunday on which Mr. Cobden died, was six
degrees below the average of the last fifty
years. On the morning of the 7th of April,
however, the wind was from the south-west,