Page:The English Peasant.djvu/305

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WILLIAM COBBETT
291

thousands of labouring men in smock frocks, it was carried to its burial-place, close by the porch of the church where he had been baptized, and where he had learnt his first ideas of God and the world to come.

No spot could have been more happily chosen. There his father lies, and his grandfather, the worthy old-fashioned labourer who served but one master during the whole of a long life; there, too, for nearly a generation, has the faithful wife rested by the side of her lord. Thus the domestic piety which shines so brightly through the whole of his career was honoured, and William Cobbett was gathered to his own people.

When the waves of time have passed again and again over the records of this century, obliterating much that now fills the minds of men, the memory of William Cobbett and his endless struggles will appear in their true significance, and his countrymen will assuredly enrol his name among their worthies as one who lived and fought and died in the service of England.