day. I know not what is portended by an alteration for the worse after eleven years of misery, but firmly believe that it is not designed as the introduction of a change for the better. You know not what I suffered while you were here, nor was there any need you should. Your friendship for me would have made you in some degree a partaker of my woes, and your share in them would have been increased by your inability to help me. Perhaps, indeed, they took a keener edge, from the consideration of your presence. The friend of my heart, the person with whom I had formerly taken sweet counsel, no longer useful to me as a minister, no longer pleasant to me as a Christian, was a spectacle which must necessarily add the bitterness of mortification to the sadness of despair. I now see a long winter before me, and am to get through it as I can: I know the ground before I tread upon it. It is hollow; it is agitated; it suffers shocks in every direction; it is like the soil of Calabria-all whirlpool and undulation: but I must reel through it, at least if I be not swallowed up by the way. I have taken leave of the old year, and parted with it just when you did, but with very different sentiments and feelings upon the occasion. I looked back upon all the passages and occurrences of it as a traveller looks back upon a wilderness, through which he has passed with weariness and sorrow of heart, reaping no other fruit of his labor than the poor consolation, that, dreary as the desert was, he left it all behind him. The traveller would find even this comfort considerably lessened, if, as soon as he passed one wilderness, he had to traverse another of equal length, and equally desolate. In this particular, his experience and mine would exactly tally. I should rejoice indeed that the old year is over and gone, if I had not every reason to expect a new one similar to it. Even the new year is already old in my account. I am not, indeed, sufficiently second-sighted to be able to boast, by anticipation, an acquaintance with the events of it yet unborn, but rest assured that, be they what they may, not one of them comes a messenger of good to me. If even death itself should be of the number, he is no friend of mine: it is an alleviation of the woes, even of an unenlightened man, that he can wish for death, and indulge a hope, at least, that in death he shall find deliverance. But, loaded as my life is with despair, I have no such comfort as would result from a probability of better things to come were it once ended. I am far more unhappy than the traveller I have just referred to; pass

through whatever difficulties, dangers, or afflictions, I may, I am not a whit nearer home, unless a dungeon be called so. This is no very agreeable theme, but in so great a dearth of subjects to write upon, and especially impressed as I am at this moment with a sense of my own condition, I could choose no other. The weather is an exact emblem of my mind in its present state. A thick fog envelops every thing, and at the same time it freezes intensely. You will tell me, that this cold gloom will be succeeded by a cheerful spring, and endeavor to encourage me to hope for a spiritual change resembling it; but it will be lost labor. Nature revives again; but a soul once slain lives no more. The hedge that has been apparently dead, is not so: it will burst into leaf, and blossom at the appointed time; but no such time is appointed for the stake that stands in it. It is as dead as it seems, and will prove itself no dissembler. The latter end of next month will complete a period of eleven years, in which I have spoken no other language. It is a long time for a man, whose eyes were once opened, to spend in darkness-long enough to make despair an inveterate habit; and such it is to me. My friends, I know, expect that I shall yet enjoy health again. They think it necessary to the existence of divine truth, that he who once had possession of it should never finally lose it. I admit the solidity of this reasoning in every case but my own, and why not in my own? For causes which to them appears madness to allege, but which rest upon my mind with a weight of immovable conviction. If I am recoverable, why am I thus? why crippled, and made useless in the church, just at the time of life when my judgment and experience being matured, I might be most useful? Why cashiered, and turned out of service, till, according to the course of years, there is not life enough left in me to make amends for the years I have lost; till there is no reasonable hope left that the fruit can ever pay the expense of the fallow? I forestall the answer-God's ways are mysterious, and he giveth no account of his matters-an answer that would serve my purpose as well as theirs that use it. There is a mystery in my destruction, and in time it will be explained.

it

“I could easily, were it not a subject that would make us melancholy, point out to you some essential difference between the state of the person you mentioned and my own, which would prove mine to be by far the most deplorable of the two. I suppose no man would despair if he did not ap

prehend something singular in the circumstances of his own story, something that discriminates it from that of every other man, and that induces despair as an inevitable consequence. You may encounter his unhappy persuasion with as many instances as you please, of persons who, like him, having renounced all hope, were yet restored, and may thence infer that he, like them, shall meet with a season of restorationbut it is in vain. Every such individual accounts himself an exception to all rules, and, therefore, the blessed reverse that others have experienced, affords no ground of comfortable expectation to him. But you will say, it is reasonable to conclude that as all your predecessors in this vale of misery and horror have found themselves delightfully disappointed, so may you. I grant the reasonableness of it-it would be sinful, perhaps, as well as uncharitable to reason otherwisebut an argument hypothetical in its nature, however rationally conducted, may lead to a false conclusion; and in this instance so will yours. But I forbear, and will say no more, though it is a subject on which I could write more than the mail could carry. I must deal with you as I deal with poor Mrs. Unwin, in all our disputes about it-cutting all controversy short by the event."

To a request from Mr. Newton that Cowper would favor the editor of the Theological Magazine with an occasion l essay, he thus writes: "I converse, you say, upon other subjects than that of despair, and may therefore write upon others. Indeed, my friend, I am a man of very little conversation upon any subject. From that of despair, I abstain as much as possible, for the sake of my company; but I will venture to say that it is never out of my mind one minute in the whole day. I do not mean to say that I am never cheerful. I am often so; always, indeed, when my nights have been undisturbed for a season. But the effect of such continual listening to the language of a heart hopeless and deserted, is, that I can never give much more than half my attention to what is started by others, and very rarely start anything myself. You will easily perceive that a mind thus occupied, is but indifferently qualified for the consideration of theological matters. The most useful, and the most delightful topics of that kind, are to me forbidden fruit: I tremble as I approach them. It has happened to me sometimes that I have found myself imperceptibly drawn in and made a party in such discourse. The consequence has been dis satisfaction and self-reproach. You will tell me, perhaps,

that I have written upon those subjects in verse, and maytherefore in prose. But there is a difference. The search after poetical expression, the rhymes, and the numbers, are all affairs of some difficulty: they amuse, indeed, but are not to be attained without study, and engross, perhaps, a larger share of the attention than the subject itself.”

In the spring of 1785, his friends became more sanguine in their expectations of his ultimate recovery, and they felt persuaded it would take place at no very distant period. It appears also, by the following extract, that Cowper was not himself wholly destitute of hope on the subject. Writing to Mr. Newton, he says:-"I am sensible of the tenderness and affectionate kindness with which you recollect our past intercourse, and express your hopes of my future restoration. I, too, within the last eight months, have had my hopes, though they have been of short duration, cut off, like the foam upon the waters. Some previous adjustments, indeed, are necessary before a lasting expectation of comfort can take place in me. There are those persuasions in my mind, which either entirely forbid the entrance of hope, or, if it enter, immediately eject it. They are incompatible with any such inmate, and must be turned out themselves before so desirable a guest can possibly have secure possession. This, you say, will be done. It may be, but it is not done yet; nor has a single step in the course of God's dealings with me been taken towards it. If I mend, no creature ever mended so slowly, that recovered at last. I am like a slug, or a snail, that has fallen into a deep well; slug as he is, he performs his descent with a velocity proportioned to his weight; but he does not crawl up again quite so fast. Mine was a rapid plunge; but my return to daylight, if I am indeed returning, is leisurely enough. Were I such as I once was, I should say that I have a claim upon your particular notice, which nothing ought to supersede. Most of your connexions you may fairly be said to have formed by your own act; but your connexion with me was the work of God. The kine that went up with the ark from Bathshemesh, left what they loved behind them, in obedience to an impression which to them was perfectly dark and unintelligible. Your journey to Huntingdon was not less wonderful. He, indeed, who sent you, knew well wherefore, but you knew not. That dispensation, therefore, would furnish me as long as we can both remember it, with a plea for some distinction at your hands, had I occasion to use and urge it, which I have not. But I am

altered since that time; and if your affection for me had ceased, you might very reasonably justify your change by mine. I can say nothing for myself at present: but this I can venture to foretell, that should the restoration of which my friends assure me obtain, I shall undoubtedly love those who have continued to love me, even in a state of transformation from my former self, much more than ever."

It is gratifying to know, that, while such was the melancholy state of Cowper's mind, and while he steadily refused all religious comfort, come whence it might, he nevertheless afforded the most pleasing proofs, by his amiable and consistent conduct, of the firm hold which religion still had of his affections. The excellent remarks that are to be found in his letters, written at this period, show that he had some lucid intervals, and that occasional gleams of light shot across the darkened horizon of his mind. "It strikes me," (he says on one occasion,) "as a very observable instance of providential kindness to man, that such an exact accordance had been contrived between his ear and the sounds with which, at least in a rural situation, it is almost every moment visited. All the world is sensible of the uncomfortable effect that certain sounds have upon the nerves, and consequently upon the spirits: and if a sinful world had been filled with such as would have curdled the blood, and have made the sense of hearing a perpetual inconvenience, I do not know that we should have had a right to complain. But now the fields, the woods, and the gardens, have each their concerts, and the ear of man is for ever regaled by creatures, who, while they please themselves, at the same time delight him. Even the ears that are deaf to the gospel, are continually entertained, though without appreciating it, by sounds for which they are solely indebted to its author. There is somewhere in infinite space, a world that does not roll within the precincts of mercy, and as it is reasonable, and even scriptural, to suppose that there is music in heaven, in these dismal regions perhaps the reverse of it is found-tones so dismal, as to make woe itself more insupportable, and even to acuminate despair."

In a letter to Mr. Newton, the following serious reflections Occur:-66 People that are but little acquainted with the terrors of divine wrath, are not much afraid of trifling with their Maker. But for my own part, I would sooner take Empledocles' leap, and fling myself into Mount Etna, than I would do it in the slightest instance, were I in circumstances to