Page:The English Peasant.djvu/263

 front are roads cut through the sand-rock, their sides being perforated with martins' nests and crowned by tall firs, at whose feet brake and ling and prodigious fungi grow. By the side of the house a little gate opens into the most picturesque of walks, leading along a level terrace cut right through the hanger, and so entirely shaded by trees, to the mansion once occupied by Sir William Temple in Moor Park. It is no stately avenue, but a wild path through the woods; yet perfectly passable, and as agreeable walking as the turf of a park.

In this cottage, thus romantically situated, lived Hester Johnson, the ill-fated but famous Stella; and along this path she, clad in hooped dress and high-heeled shoes, and her whimsical lover, in his long periwig and rusty black clothes, must have had many a stroll.

It is certainly a curious and perhaps an idle thought to suppose that the spirit which got possession of Swift among these scenes, should have returned after the lapse of a generation to the same place, and found another mind ready for its operation?

However, Cobbett developed almost every one of Swift's characteristics of style; but what we chiefly note is, that from the very first he courted and delighted in his spirit. In Cobbett's "Advice to Young Men" he says: "When I read the work of Pope and Swift, I was greatly delighted with their lashing Dennis." One of Cobbett's favourite maxims, "If a flea or a louse bite me, I'll kill it if I can," is said to have been borrowed from Swift. And he concludes one of his tirades with this remark—"I always say with Swift —

A few yards from Stella's cottage stand the park gates of "Waverley," the place from which it is said Scott got the famous title by which his novels are known to the world. If the influence of Swift is visible in Cobbett's style and temper, that of Waverley Park is even more so in his opinions. The demesne had belonged in former times to a monastery of the Cistercian order, founded in 1128 by Giffard, Bishop of Winchester. Two hundred years ago Waverley Abbey was in a very different condition from what it is now. In Cobbett's boyhood there were still the remains of a fine