a weekly journal for the same number of years with the same spirit,
interest, and untired perseverance. Paine's writings are a sort of
introduction to political arithmetic on a new plan: Cobbett keeps a
day-book, and makes an entry at full of all the occurrences and
troublesome questions that start up throughout the year. Cobbett, with
vast industry, vast information, and the utmost power of making what he
says intelligible, never seems to get at the beginning or come to the
end of any question: Paine in a few short sentences seems by his
peremptory manner 'to clear it from all controversy, past, present, and
to come.' Paine takes a bird's-eye view of things. Cobbett sticks
close to them, inspects the component parts, and keeps fast hold of the
smallest advantages they afford him. Or, if I might here be indulged in
a pastoral allusion, Paine tries to enclose his ideas in a fold for
security and repose; Cobbett lets _his_ pour out upon the plain like a
flock of sheep to feed and batten. Cobbett is a pleasanter writer for
those to read who do not agree with him; for he is less dogmatical, goes
more into the common grounds of fact and argument to which all appeal,
is more desultory and various, and appears less to be driving at a
present conclusion than urged on by the force of present conviction. He
is therefore tolerated by all parties, though he has made himself by
turns obnoxious to all; and even those he abuses read him. The
Reformers read him when he was a Tory, and the Tories read him now that
he is a Reformer. He must, I think, however, be _caviare_ to the
Whigs.[1]

If he is less metaphysical and poetical than his celebrated prototype,
he is more picturesque and dramatic. His episodes, which are numerous
as they are pertinent, are striking, interesting, full of life and
_naivete_, minute, double measure running over, but never
tedious--_nunquam sufflaminandus erat_. He is one of those writers who