accuracy with which it apprehends them in the midst of so great a tumult. Many changes and many years rolled over Cowperyears of black and dark depression, years of tranquil society, of genial labour, of literary fame, but never in the lightest or darkest hour was he wholly unconscious of the abstract creed of Martin Madan. At the time, indeed, the body had its rights, and maintained them.

"While I traversed the apartment, expecting every moment that the earth would open her mouth and swallow me, my conscience scaring me, and the city of refuge out of reach and out of sight, a strange and horrible darkness fell upon me. If it were possible that a heavy blow could light on the brain without touching the skull, such was the sensation I felt. I clapped my hand to my forehead, and cried aloud, through the pain it gave me. At every stroke my thoughts and expressions became more wild and incoherent; all that remained clear was the sense of sin, and the expectation of punishment. These kept undisturbed possession all through my illness, without interruption or abatement."

It is idle to follow details further. The deep waters had passed over him, and it was long before the face of his mind was dry or green again.

He was placed in a lunatic asylum, where he continued many months, and which he left apparently cured. After some changes of no moment, but which by his own account evinced many traces of dangerous excitement, he took up his abode at Huntingdon, with the family of Unwin; and it is remarkable how soon the taste for easy and simple, yet not wholly unintellectual society, which had formerly characterized him, revived again. The delineation cannot be given in any terms but his

own:

"We breakfast commonly between eight and nine; till eleven, we read either the Scripture, or the sermons of some faithful preacher of those holy mysteries; at eleven we attend divine service, which is performed here twice every day; and from twelve to three we separate, and amuse ourselves as we please. During that interval, I either read, in my own apartment, or walk, or ride, or work in the garden. We seldom sit an hour after dinner, but, if the weather permits, adjourn to the garden, where, with Mrs. Unwin and her son, I have generally the pleasure of religious conversation till teatime. If it rains, or is too windy for walking, we either converse within doors, or sing some hymns of Martin's collection, and by the help of Mrs. Unwin's harpsichord, make up a tolerable concert, in which our hearts, I hope, are the best and most musical performers. After tea we sally forth to walk in good earnest. Mrs. Unwin is a good walker, and we have generally travelled about four miles before we see home again. When the days are short, we

make this excursion in the former part of the day, between churchtime and dinner. At night we read, and converse, as before, till supper, and commonly finish the evening either with hymns, or a sermon, and last of all the family are called to prayers. I need not tell you, that such a life as this is consistent with the utmost cheerfulness; accordingly we are all happy, and dwell together in unity as brethren. Mrs. Unwin has almost a maternal affection for me, and I have something very like a filial one for her, and her son and I are brothers. Blessed be the God of our salvation for such companions, and for such a life, above all for a heart to like it."

Mr. Unwin, the husband of Mrs. Unwin, was suddenly killed soon after, and Cowper removed with Mrs. Unwin to Olney, where a new epoch of his life begins.

The curate of Olney at this time was John Newton, a man of great energy of mind, and well known in his generation not only for several vigorous works, but still more for a very remarkable life. He had been captain of a Liverpool slave ship-an occupation in which he had quite energy enough to have succeeded, but had left it from serious motives, and become one of the strongest and most active of the Low Church clergymen of that day. He was in truth one of those men who seem intended to make excellence disagreeable. He was a converting engine. The whole of his own enormous vigour of body-the whole steady intensity of a pushing, impelling, compelling, unoriginal mind-all the mental or corporeal exertion he could exact from the weak or elicit from the strong, were devoted to one sole purpose-the effectual impact of the Calvinistic tenets on the parishioners of Olney. Nor do we wish to hint or suggest that his exertions were futile or useless. There is no denying that there is a certain stiff, tough, agricultural, clayish English nature on which the aggressive divine produces a visible and good effect. The hardest and heaviest hammering seems required to stir and warm that close and coarse matter. To impress any sense of the supernatural on so secular a substance is a great good, though that sense be expressed in false or perplexing or irritating theories. It is unpleasant, no doubt, to hear the hammering; the bystanders are in an evil case; you might as well live near an iron ship yard. Still the blows do not hurt the iron. Something of the sort is necessary to beat the coarse ore into a shining and useful shape. But the case is different when the hundred-handed divine desires to hit others. The very system which, on account of its hard blows, is adapted to the tough and ungentle, is by that very reason unfit for the tremulous and tender. The nature of many men and many women is such that it will not bear the daily and incessant repetition

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of some certain and indisputable truths. The universe has of course its dark aspect. Many tremendous facts and difficulties can be found which often haunt the timid and sometimes incapacitate the feeble. To be continually insisting on these, and these only, will simply render both more and more unfit for the duties to which they were born. And if this is the case with certain fact, and clear truth, how much more with uncertain error and mystic exaggeration! Mr. Newton was alive to this consequence of his system: "I believe my name is up about the country for preaching people mad; for whether it is owing to the sedentary life women lead here, &c., &c., I suppose we have near a dozen in different degrees disordered in their heads, and most of them, I believe, truly gracious people." He perhaps found his peculiar views more generally appreciated among this class of young ladies than among more healthy and rational people, and clearly did not wholly condemn the delivering them even at this cost from the tyranny of the "carnal reason."

Mr.

No more dangerous adviser, if this world had been searched over, could have been found for Cowper. What the latter required was prompt encouragement to cheerful occupation, quiet amusement, gentle and unexhaustive society. Newton thought otherwise. His favourite motto was Perimus in licitis. All that easy and simple round of daily pleasures and genial employments which are the sources of instinctive happiness to the happiest natures, and most effectually cheer and vary the common life of common men, were studiously watched and scrutinized with the energy of a Puritan and the watchfulness of an inquisitor. Mr. Newton had all the tastes and habits which go to form what in the Catholic system is called a spiritual director. Of late years it is well known that the institution, or rather practice of confession, has expanded and developed into a greater and more potent and more imperious organization. You are expected by the priests of the Roman church not only to confess to them what you have done, but to take their advice as to what shall do. The future is under their direction just as the past was beneath their scrutiny. This was exactly the view which Mr. Newton took of his relation to Cowper. A natural aptitude for dictation-a steady, strong, compelling decision,-great self-command, and a sharp perception of all impressible points in the characters of others,-made the task of guiding "weaker brethren" a natural and pleasant pursuit. To suppose a shrinking, a wounded, and tremulous mind like that of Cowper's would rise against such bold dogmatism, such hard volition, such animal nerve, is to faucy that the beaten slave will dare

you

the lash which his very eyes instinctively fear and shun. Mr. Newton's great idea was that Cowper ought to be of some use. There was a great deal of excellent hammering hammered in the parish, and it was sinful that a man with nothing to do should sit tranquil. Several persons in the street had done what they ought not; football was not unknown; cards were played; flirtation was not conducted "improvingly." It was clearly Cowper's duty to put a stop to such things. Accordingly he made him a parochial implement; he set him to visit painful cases, to attend at prayer meetings, to compose melancholy hymns, even to conduct or share in conducting public services himself. It never seems to have occurred to him that so fragile a mind would be unequal to the burden-that a bruised reed does often break; or rather if it did occur to him, he regarded it as a subterranean suggestion, and expected a supernatural interference to counteract the events at which it hinted. Yet there are certain rules and principles in this world which seem earthly, but which the most excellent may not on that account venture to disregard. The consequence of placing Cowper in exciting situations was a return of his excitement. It is painful to observe, that though the attack resembled in all its main features his former one, it was several months before Mr. Newton could be brought to allow any proper physical remedies to be applied, and then it was too late. We need not again recount details. Many months of dark despondency were to be passed before he returned to a simple and rational mind.

The truth is, that independently of the personal activity and dauntless energy which made Mr. Newton so little likely to sympathize with such a mind as Cowper's, the former lay under a still more dangerous disqualification for Cowper's predominant adviser, viz., an erroneous view of his case. His opinion exactly coincided with that which Cowper first heard from Mr. Madan during his first illness in London. This view is in substance that the depression which Cowper originally suffered from was exactly what almost all mankind, if they had been rightly aware of their true condition, would have suffered also. They were "children of wrath" just as he was; and the only difference between them was, that he appreciated his state and they did not, showing in fact that Cowper was not, as common persons imagined, on the extreme verge of insanity, but, on the contrary, a particularly rational and right-seeing man. far, as Cowper says, with one of the painful smiles which make his "Narrative" so melancholy, "my condition was less desperate." That is, his counsellors had persuaded him that his malady was rational, and his sufferings befitting his true posi

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tion,--no difficult task, for they had the poignancy of pain and the pertinacity of madness on their side: the efficacy of their arguments was less when they endeavoured to make known the sources of consolation. We have seen the immediate effect of the first exposition of the evangelical theory of faith. When applied to the case of the morbidly-despairing sinner, that theory has one argumentative imperfection which the logical sharpness of madness will soon discover and point out. The simple reply is, "I do not feel the faith which you describe. I wish I could feel it, but it is no use trying to conceal the fact. I am conscious of nothing like it." And this was substantially Cowper's reply on his first interview with Mr. Madan. It was a simple denial of a fact solely accessible to his personal consciousness; and, as such, unanswerable. And in this intellectual position (if such it can be called) his mind long rested. At the commencement of his residence at Olney, however, there was a decided change. Whether it were that he mistook the glow of physical recovery for the peace of spiritual renovation, or that some subtler and deeper agency were, as was supposed, at work, the outward sign is certain; and there is no question but that during the first months of his residence at Olney and his daily intercourse with Mr. Newton, he did feel, or supposed himself to feel, the faith which he was instructed to deem so desirable, and he easily lent himself with natural pleasure to the diffusion of it among those around him. But the theory in question requires a metaphysical postulate, which to many minds is simply impossible. A prolonged meditation on unseen realities is sufficiently difficult, and seems scarcely the occupation for which common human nature was intended; but more than this is alleged to be essential. The meditation must be successful in exciting certain feelings of a kind peculiarly delicate, subtle, and (so to speak) unstable. The wind bloweth where it listeth; but it is scarcely more partial, more quick, more unaccountable, than the glow of an emotion excited by a supernatural and unseen object. This depends on the vigour of imagination which has to conceive that object-on the vivacity of feeling which has to be quickened by it on the physical energy which has to maintain and support it. The very watchfulness, the scrupulous anxiety to find and retain it, are exactly the most unfavourable to it. In a delicate disposition like that of Cowper, such feelings revolt from the inquisition of others, and shrink from the stare of the mind itself. But this is not the worst. The mind of Cowper was, so to speak, naturally terrestrial. If a man wishes for a nice appreciation of the details of time and sense, let him consult Cowper's miscellaneous letters. Each simple event of