was not so with me. I read without perception, and was so distressed, that, had every clerk in the office been my friend, it could have availed me little; for I was not in a condition to receive instruction, much less to elicit it out of manuscripts, without direction. Many months went over me thus employed; constant in the use of means, despairing as to the issue."

As the time of trial drew near his excitement rapidly increased. A short excursion into the country was attended with momentary benefit; but as soon as he returned to town he became immediately unfit for occupation, and as unsettled as ever. He grew first to wish to become mad, next to believe that he should become so, and only to be afraid that the expected delirium might not come on soon enough to prevent his appearance for examination before the lords, a fear the bare existence of which shows how slight a barrier remained between him and the insanity which he fancied that he longed for. He then began to contemplate suicide, and not unnaturally called to mind a curious circumstance:

"I well recollect, too," he writes, "that when I was about eleven years of age, my father desired me to read a vindication of selfmurder, and give him my sentiments upon the question: I did so, and argued against it. My father heard my reasons, and was silent, neither approving nor disapproving; from whence I inferred that he sided with the author against me; though all the time, I believe, the true motive for his conduct was, that he wanted, if he could, to think favourably of the state of a departed friend, who had some years before destroyed himself, and whose death had struck him with the deepest affliction. But this solution of the matter never once occurred to me, and the circumstance now weighed mightily with me."

And he made several attempts to execute his purpose, all which are related with curious minuteness in 66 a Narrative," which he drew up after his recovery; but of which the elaborate detail shows a strange and most painful tendency to revive the slightest circumstances of delusions which it would have been most safe and most wholesome never to recall. The curiously careful style of the narrative, as elegant as that of the most flowing and felicitous letter, reminds one of nothing so much as the studiously, beautiful, and compact handwriting in which Rousseau used to narrate and describe the most incoherent and indefinite of his personal delusions. On the whole, however-for a long time at least-it does not seem that the life of Cowper was in real danger. The same hesitation and indeterminateness of nerve which rendered him liable to these fancies, as well as unequal to ordinary action, also hindered him from

carrying out these terrible visitations to their rigorous and fearful consequences. At last, however, there seems to have been possible if not actual danger :

"Not one hesitating thought now remained, but I fell greedily to the execution of my purpose. My garter was made of a broad piece of scarlet binding, with a sliding buckle, being sewn together at the ends; by the help of the buckle I formed a noose, and fixed it about my neck, straining it so tight that I hardly left a passage for my breath, or for the blood to circulate; the tongue of the buckle held it fast. At each corner of the bed was placed a wreath of carved work, fastened by an iron pin, which passed up through the midst of it: the other part of the garter, which made a loop, I slipped over one of these, and hung by it some seconds, drawing up my feet under me, that they might not touch the floor; but the iron bent, and the carved work slipped off, and the garter with it. I then fastened it to the frame of the tester, winding it round, and tying it in a strong knot. The frame broke short, and let me down again.

"The third effort was more likely to succeed. I set the door open, which reached within a foot of the ceiling; by the help of a chair I could command the top of it, and the loop being large enough to admit a large angle of the door, was easily fixed so as not to slip off again. I pushed away the chair with my feet, and hung at my whole length. While I hung there, I distinctly heard a voice say three times, "Tis over!" Though I am sure of the fact, and was so at the time, yet it did not at all alarm me, or affect my resolution. I hung so long that I lost all sense, all consciousness of existence.

"When I came to myself again, I thought myself in hell; the sound of my own dreadful groans was all that I heard, and a feeling like that produced by a flash of lightning just beginning to seize upon me, passed over my whole body. In a few seconds I found myself fallen on my face to the floor. In about half a minute I recovered my feet; and, reeling and staggering, tumbled into bed again.

"By the blessed providence of God, the garter which had held me till the bitterness of temporal death was past, broke just before eternal death had taken place upon me. The stagnation of the blood under one eye, in a broad crimson spot, and a red circle round my neck, showed plainly that I had been on the brink of eternity. The latter, indeed, might have been occasioned by the pressure of the garter, but the former was certainly the effect of strangulation; for it was not attended with the sensation of a bruise, as it must have been, had I, in my fall, received one in so tender a part. And I rather think the circle round my neck was owing to the same cause; for the part was not excoriated, nor at all in pain.

"Soon after I got into bed, I was surprised to hear a noise in

the dining-room, where the laundress was lighting a fire; she had found the door unbolted, notwithstanding my design to fasten it, and must have passed the bed-chamber door while I was hanging on it, and yet never perceived me. She heard me fall, and presently came to ask me if I was well; adding, she feared I had been in a fit.

"I sent her to a friend, to whom I related the whole affair, and dispatched him to my kinsman at the coffee-house. As soon as the latter arrived, I pointed to the broken garter, which lay in the middle of the room; and apprized him also of the attempt I had been making. His words were, "My dear Mr. Cowper, you terrify me! To be sure you cannot hold the office at this rate,-where is the deputation?" I gave him the key of the drawer where it was deposited; and his business requiring his immediate attendance, he took it away with him; and thus ended all my connexion with the Parliament office."

It must have been a strange scene; for, so far as appears, the outward manners of Cowper had undergone no remarkable change. There was always a mild composure about them which would have deceived any but the most experienced observer; and it is probable that Major Cowper, his "kins man" and intimate friend, had very little or any previous suspicion or idea of the conflict which was raging beneath his tranquil and accomplished exterior. What a contrast is the "broad piece of scarlet binding" and the red circle, showing plainly that I had been on the "brink of eternity," to the daily life of the easy gentleman "who contributed some essays to the St. James's Magazine,' and more than one to the 'St. James's Chronicle,'" living "soft years" on a smooth superficies of existence, away from the dark realities, which are, as it were, the skeleton of our life,-which seem to haunt us like a death's head throughout the narrative that has been quoted!

It was doubtless the notion of Cowper's friends, that when all idea of an examination before the Lords was removed by the abandonment of his nomination to the office in question, the excitement which that idea had called forth would very soon pass away. But that notion was an error. A far more complicated state of mind ensued. If we may advance a theory on a most difficult as well as painful topic, we would say that religion is very rarely the proximate or impulsive cause of madness. The real and ultimate cause (as we speak) is of course that unknown something which we variously call pre-disposition, or malady, or defect. But the critical and exciting cause seems generally to be some comparatively trivial external occasion which falls. within the necessary lot and life of the person who becomes

mad. The inherent excitability is usually awakened by some petty casual stimulant, which seems positively not worth a thought-certainly a terribly slight agent for the wreck and havoc which it makes. The constitution of the human mind seems to be such, that the great general questions, problems, and difficulties of our state of being do not commonly seem capable of producing that result. They appear to lie too far in the distance, to require too great a stretch of imagination, to be too apt (for the very weakness of our minds' sake perhaps,) to be thrust out of view by the trivial occurrences of this desultory world, to be too impersonal, in fact, to cause the exclusive anxious aching occupation, which is the common prelude and occasion of insanity. Afterwards, on the other hand, when the wound is once struck, when the petty circumstance has been allowed to work its awful consequence, religion very frequently becomes the predominating topic of delusion. It would seem as if, when the mind was once set apart by the natural consequences of the disease, and secluded from the usual occupations of, and customary contact with other minds, it searched about through all the universe for causes of trouble and anguish. A certain pain probably exists; and even in insanity, man is so far a rational being that he seeks and craves at least the outside and semblance of a reason for a suffering, which is really and truly without reason. Something must be found to justify its anguish to itself. And naturally the great difficulties inherent in the very position of man in this world, and trying so deeply the faith and firmness of the wariest and wisest minds, are ever ready to present plausible justifications for causeless depression. An anxious melancholy is not without very perplexing sophisms and very painful illustrations, with which a morbid mind can easily obtain not only a fair logical position, but even apparent argumentative victories, on many points at least, over the more hardy and vigorous part of mankind. The acuteness of madness soon perverts these, as it were, to its own wretched and terrible justification. No originality of mind is necessary for that purpose. Great and terrible systems of divinity and philosophy lie round about us, which, if true, might drive a wise man mad-which read like professed exculpations of a contemplated insanity.

"To this moment," writes Cowper, immediately after the passage which has been quoted, "I had felt no concern of a spiritual kind." But now a conviction fell upon him that he was eternally lost. "All my worldly sorrows," he says, "seemed as if they had never been; the terrors which succeeded them seemed so great and so much more afflicting. One moment I thought myself expressly excluded by one chapter; next by another."

He thought the curse of the barren fig-tree was pronounced with an especial and designed reference to him. All day long these thoughts followed him. He lived nearly alone, and his friends were either unaware of the extreme degree to which his mind was excited, or unalive to the possible alleviation with which new scenes and cheerful society might even then have been attended. He thought the people in the street stared at and despised him-that ballads were made in ridicule of him— that the voice of his conscience was externally audible. He then bethought him of a Mr. Madan, an evangelical minister, at that time held in much estimation, but who afterwards fell into disrepute by the publication of a work on marriage and its obligations (or rather its non-obligations), which Cowper has commented on in a controversial poem. That gentleman called on Cowper at his request, and began to explain to him the gospel.

'He spoke," says Cowper, "of original sin, and the corruption of every man born into the world, whereby every one is a child of wrath. I perceived something like hope dawning in my heart. This doctrine set me more on a level with the rest of mankind, and made my condition appear less desperate.

"Next he insisted on the all-atoning efficacy of the blood of Jesus, and his righteousness, for our justification. While I heard this part of his discourse, and the scriptures on which he founded it, my heart began to burn within me; my soul was pierced with a sense of my bitter ingratitude to so merciful a Saviour; and those tears, which I thought impossible, burst forth freely. I saw clearly that my case required such a remedy, and had not the least doubt within me but that this was the gospel of salvation.

"Lastly, he urged the necessity of a lively faith in Jesus Christ; not an assent only of the understanding, but a faith of application, an actually laying hold of it, and embracing it as a salvation wrought out for me personally. Here I failed, and deplored my want of such a faith. He told me it was the gift of God, which he trusted He would bestow upon me. I could only reply, 'I wish He would :' a very irreverent petition; but a very sincere one, and such as the blessed God, in His due time, was pleased to answer."

It does not appear that previous to this conversation he had. ever distinctly realized the tenets which were afterwards to have so much influence over him. For the moment they produced a good effect, but in a few hours their novelty was over-the dark hour returned, and he awoke from slumber with a "stronger alienation from God than ever." The remarkable tenacity with which the mind in moments of excitement appropriates and retains very abstract tenets that bear even in slight degree on the topic of its excitement, is as remarkable as the facility and