CoBBETT's election to Parliament made a great difference to his manner of life. He had the habits of the countrymanhabits the virtue of which he was proud to proclaim. "Early to bed and early to rise " had been his maxim throughout his life. He would rise with or, in winter, well before the sun, and have done a good part of a day's work before town-bred folks were stirring. The habits of the Parliament men, beginning the day when honest folk had done their toil, and bringing up vital business for discussion after midnight, made him furious. He stormed and grumbled constantly against these parliamentary habits in the Register, and in the House made a number of ineffectual attempts to get the procedure altered. He drew a parallel-and a contrastbetween the English Parliament and the Kiddadids-the large grasshoppers-of America. " The chafferings in the House are of little more consequence to us than is the ceaseless nightly din that the monotonous Kiddadids are now making in the woods of America. It is curious that these noisy things also begin their noise at sunset and cease it at sunrise; and so true are they as to this matter, that, in the most cloudy weather, you can tell the very moment of the sun setting by the beginning of their noise, and the very moment of the sun rising by the ceasing of their noise. It is a large, beautifully green grasshopper, an inch and a half high and two inches and a half long, and it makes its noise with the two ears or flaps hanging down by the sides of its head. It is perfectly harmless, lives upon the dews and the sweat that it gets from the leaves of the trees. Oh, how often have I wished that we, in England, were blessed with a set of Kiddadids ! Their noise is perfectly monotonous; and you go to sleep amidst it, after a very little use, just the same as if there were no noise at all. The Kiddadid is no gormandizer and guzzler ; it never yawns and snores and coughs and sneezes and belches enough to poison you; it is cleanly in its person, and in a dress always

fit to be seen : yes, often have I regretted that we had not a set of Kiddadids in England." 1

This was written about the unreformed Parliament; but Cobbett's opinion about its successor was not very different. Elected when he was in his seventieth year, he was too old to change his habits, even if he had been willing to change them, without serious results on his health. He would not rise late, or mitigate the intensity of his day's work. He tried to add on his parliamentary duties to a day already long and strenuous, especially for a man of his years.