CURRENT LITERATURE.
Mr. Cobden and the Times." (Alex. Ireland and (Jo.)—Mr. Cobden has reprinted his famous correspondence with the Times, together with a subsequent correspondence with the Daily Telegraph, and a preface. The charge against the Telegraph is that it commented on Mr. Cobden's letter although it had declined to print it. But it did not do so until Mr. Cobden had published the letter in the Daily News, which thus became public property. There is also a preface in which the Spectator, in common with two of our weekly contemporaries, is accused of having attained to a "steel polish" by which it is "enabled to subordinate the feelings of indignation at a foul wrong to the claims of a glittering rhetoric or the attitudes of a posture-master." So far from our having subordinated our feelings of indignation, we called the charge brought against Messrs. Cobden and Bright by tho Times "a not even plausible falsehood," and "a wicked class-slander," in an article which was pub- lished on the 28th November, a full week before Mr. Cobden himself was even aware of his wrongs. But even though it be a crime which cannot be expiated to recognize that Mr. Cobden may be in the right, and yet vindicate himself without either dignity, temper, or discretion, the perusal of this pamphlet has only confirmed us in that opinion.
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