set forth, could meet with a lukewarm reception at my hands, or be entertained with indifference! Would you know the true reason of my long silence? Conscious that my religious principles are generally excepted against, and that the conduct they produce, wherever they are heartily maintained, is still more the object of disapprobation than those principles themselves; and remembering that I had made both the one and the other known to you, without having any clear assurance that our faith in Jesus was of the same stamp and character, I could not help thinking it possible that you might disapprove both my sentiments and practice; that you might think the one unsupported by Scripture, and the other whimsical, and unnecessarily strict and rigorous, and consequently would be rather pleased with the suspension of a correspondence, which a different way of thinking upon so momentous a subject as that we wrote upon, was likely to render tedious and irksome to you.

"I have told you the truth from my heart; forgive me these injurious suspicions, and never imagine that I shall hear from you upon this delightful theme without a real joy, or without prayer to God to prosper you in the way of his truth, his sanctifying and saving truth."

The younger Unwin happened to be coming from London to Huntingdon at that time, he gave him an introduction, and desired him to call on Mrs. Cowper in his way. "If you knew him," said he, "as well as I do, you would love him as much. But I leave the young man to speak for himself, which he is very able to do. He is ready possessed of an answer to every question you can possibly ask concerning me; and knows my whole story, from first to last 43" After his friend's return, he acknowledged wherefore he had thus introduced him. "My dear cousin," said he, "you sent my friend Unwin home to us charmed with your kind reception of him, and with every thing he saw at the Park. Shall I once more give you a peep into my vile and deceitful heart? What motive do you think lay at the bottom of my conduct, when I desired him to call upon you? I did not suspect, at first, that pride and vain glory had any share in it; but quickly after I had recom

mended the visit to him, I discovered in that fruitful soil, the very root of the matter. You know I am a stranger here; all 43 March 14, 1767.

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such are suspected characters, unless they bring their credentials with them. To this moment, I believe, it is matter of speculation in the place, whence I came, and to whom I belong. Though my friend, you may suppose, before I was admitted an inmate here, was satisfied that I was not a mere vagabond, and has, since that time, received more convincing proofs of my sponsibility; yet I could not resist the opportunity of furnishing him with ocular demonstration of it, by introducing him to one of my most splendid connexions; that when he hears me called That fellow Cowper,' which has happened heretofore, he may be able, upon unquestionable evidence, to assert my gentlemanhood, and relieve me from the weight of that opprobrious appellation. Oh Pride! Pride! it deceives with the subtlety of a serpent, and seems to walk erect, though it crawls upon the earth. How it will twist and twine itself about, to get from under the Cross, which it is the glory of our Christian calling to be able to bear with patience and good will. They who can guess at the heart of a stranger,and you especially, who are of a compassionate temper,—will be more ready, perhaps, to excuse me, in this instance, than I can be to excuse myself. But, in good truth, it was abominable pride of heart, indignation, and vanity, and deserves no better name 44,

In this letter he expresses his satisfaction that Mrs. Cowper was now acquainted so particularly with all the circumstances of his story. "Her secrecy and discretion," he said, "might, he knew, be trusted with any thing. A thread of mercy ran through all the intricate mazes of those afflictive providences, which were so mysterious to himself at the time, and which must ever remain so to all who would not see what was the great design of them."

Cowper had always been fond of plants. When he lived in the Temple he used to purchase myrtles almost every year in Covent Garden: it was necessary thus annually to replace them, "because, even in that airy situation," he said, "they were sure to lose their leaf 5 in winter, and seldom recovered 44 April 3, 1767. 45 So Cowley says of a nobler plant, and finds in the fact a similitude, the truth of which Cowper would have felt.

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it again in spring 46. He now commenced florist and horticulturist at Huntingdon. "If the major,” says he to Mrs. Cowper, can make up a small packet of seeds, that will make a figure in a garden, where we have little else besides jessamine and honey-suckle, (such a packet as may be put into one's fob), I will promise to take great care of them, as I ought to value natives of the Park. They must not be such, however, as require great skill in the management, for at present I have no skill to spare." Unwin brought the seeds with him: "they will spring up," said Cowper, "like so many mementos to remind me of my friends at the Park"." His attention was directed more to the useful than the ornamental departments of horticulture. 66 Having commenced gardening," he says to Hill, "I study the arts of pruning, sowing, and planting; and enterprise every thing in that way, from melons down to cabbages. I have a large garden to display my abilities in; and were we twenty miles nearer London I might turn higgler, and serve your honour with cauliflowers and broccoli at the best hand."

Careless as Cowper had been of acquiring any legal reputation, it appears that some respect was paid to him in the profession; his determination to take no farther part in the common business of the world was known only to his most intimate connexions, and a letter reached him at Huntingdon, announcing his appointment to the honorary office of lecturer at Lyon's Inn. Upon this he wrote to Hill in that pleasant and natural strain from which he never departed in his correspondence with that old and confidential friend: "Dear Sephus, Notwithstanding it is so agreeable a thing to read law lectures to the students of Lyon's Inn, especially to the reader himself, I must beg leave to waive it. Danby Pickering must be the happy man; and I heartily wish him joy of his deputyship. As to the treat, I think if it goes before the lecture, it will be apt to blunt the apprehension of the students; and if it comes after, it may erase from their memories impressions so newly made. I could wish, therefore, that for their benefit and behoof, this circumstance were omitted. But if it be absolutely necessary, I hope Mr. Salt, or whoever takes the conduct of it, will see that it be managed with the frugality and temperance becoming so learned a body. I shall be obliged 46 March 14, 1767. 47 May 14, 1767.

to you if you will present my respects to Mr. Treasurer Salt, and express my concern, at the same time, that he had the trouble of sending me two letters upon the occasion. The first of them never came to hand 48 "

fast ;

In his next letter, answering item by item the reply which he had received to this, he says, "Fourthly, I do recollect that I myself am a little guilty of what I blame so much in Mr. E. having returned you so facetious an answer to your serious inquiry concerning the entertainment to be given, or not to be given, to the gentlemen of Lyon's Inn, that you must needs have been at a loss to collect from it my real intentions. My sincere desire, however, in this respect, is that they may and being supported in this resolution, not only by an assurance that I can, and therefore ought, to make a better use of my money, but also by the examples of my predecessors in the same business, Mr. Barrington and Mr. Schutz, I have no longer any doubt concerning the propriety of condemning them to abstinence upon this occasion; and cannot but wish that point may be carried, if it can be done without engaging you in the trouble of any disagreeable haggling and higgling and twisting and wriggling to save my money "9"

Having inquired whether his "exchequer was full or empty, and whether the revenue of last year was yet come in, that he might proportion his payments to the exigencies of his affairs; his chancellor of the exchequer returned an answer which called forth a lively expression of satisfaction: “I am glad that you have received your money on my account, and am still more pleased that you have so much in bank, after the remittances already made. But that which increases my joy to the highest pitch of possible augmentation, is that you expect to receive more shortly." The satisfaction was not of long continuance: after a few months he says to Sephus, "If every dealer and chapman was connected with creditors like you, the poor commissioners of bankrupts would be ruined. I can only wonder at you, considering my knack at running in debt, and my slender ability to pay. After all, I am afraid that the poor stock must suffer.-My finances will never be able to satisfy these craving necessities, without leaving my debt to you entirely unsatisfied. And though I know you are sincere in what you say, and as willing to wait for your money 48 Nov. 8, 1765. 49 Dec. 3, 1765.

as heart can wish, yet quære, whether the next half year, which will bring its expenses with it, will be more propitious to you than the present? The succeeding half years may bear a close resemblance to their insolvent predecessors continually; and unless we break bank some time or other, your proposal of payment may be always what it is at present. What matters it therefore to reprieve the stock, which must come to execution at last 50 ?"

The sacrifice of stock probably removed all present pressure, and the terms upon which the Unwins had entertained him as one of the family, must have placed him comparatively at ease, when their establishment was broken up by the dreadful circumstance of Mr. Unwin's death. In July, 1767, going on a Sunday morning to serve his church, he was thrown from his horse, and the back part of his skull was fractured 51. "At nine o'clock," says Cowper, he was in perfect health, and as likely to live twenty years as either of us; and before ten was stretched speechless and senseless upon a flock bed, in a poor cottage, where (it being impossible to remove him) he died on Thursday evening. I heard his dying groans, the effect of great agony, for he was a strong man, and much convulsed in his last moments. The few short intervals of sense that were indulged him, he spent in earnest prayer, and in expressions of a firm trust and confidence in the only Saviour. To that strong hold we must all resort at last, if we would have hope in our death. When every other refuge fails, we are glad to fly to the only shelter to which we can repair to any purpose; and happy is it for us, when the false ground we have chosen for ourselves, being broken under us, we find ourselves obliged

50 Oct. 27, 1766. 51 A biographer of Cowper, when he relates this event, annexes the following note: "Non-residence can never be reconciled with the full and due discharge of the duties of a Christian ministry. It has always appeared to us, therefore, singularly inconsistent with the piety of the Unwins to have encouraged such a dereliction. Nor does it seem remote from an evident dispensation, that the stay of the family should be thus awefully removed in the very act of inconsistency. But who shall dare

To penetrate the inscrutable designs

Of Him, whose council is his sovereign will ?" When Dr. Memes called to mind these verses, he ought to have suppressed his note.