been vain of my understanding and of my acquirements in this place; and now God has made me little better than an idiot, as much as to say, 'Now be proud if you can.' Well, while I have any senses left, my thoughts will be poured out in the praise of God. I have an interest in Christ, in his blood and sufferings, and my sins are forgiven me. Have I not cause to praise him? When my understanding fails me quite, as I think it will soon, then He will pity my weakness."

Though the Lord intended that his warfare should be short, yet a warfare he was to have, and to be exposed to a measure of conflict with his own corruptions. His pain being extreme, his powers of recollection much impaired, and the Comforter withholding for a season his sensible support, he was betrayed into a fretfulness and impatience of spirit which had never been permitted to show itself before. This appearance alarmed me; and, having an opportunity afforded me by every body's absence, I said to him, "You were happier last Saturday than you are to-day. Are you entirely destitute of the consolations you then spoke of? And do you not sometimes feel comfort flowing into your heart from a sense of your acceptance with God?" He replied, "Sometimes I do, but sometimes I am left to desperation." The same day in the evening, he said, "Brother, I believe you are often uneasy, lest what lately passed should come to nothing." I replied by asking him, whether, when he found his patience and his temper fail, he endeavoured to pray for power against his corruptions? He answered, "Yes, a thousand times in a day. But I see myself odiously vile and wicked. If I die in this illness, I beg you will place no other inscription over me than such as may just mention my name, and the parish where I was minister; for that I ever had a being, and what sort of a being I had, cannot be too soon forgot. I was just beginning to be a deist, and had long desired to be so; and I will own to you, what I never confessed before, that my function and the duties of it were a weariness to me which I could not bear. Yet, wretched creature and beast as I was, I was esteemed religious, though I lived without God in the world." About this time, I reminded him of the account of Janeway which he once read at my desire. He said he had laughed at it in his own mind, and accounted it mere madness and folly; "Yet, base as I s. c.-1.

M

am," said he, "I have no doubt now but God has accepted me also, and forgiven me all my sins."

I then asked him what he thought of my narrative? He replied, "I thought it strange, and ascribed much of it to the state which you had been in. When I came to visit you in London, and found you in that deep distress, I would have given the universe to have administered some comfort to you. You may remember that I tried every method of doing it. When I found that all my attempts were vain, I was shocked to the greatest degree. I began to consider your sufferings as a judgment upon you, and my inability to alleviate them as a judgment upon myself. When Mr. Madan came, he succeeded in a moment. This surprised me; but it does not surprise me now. He had the key to your heart, which I had not. That which filled me with disgust against my office as a minister was, the same ill success which attended me in my own parish. There I endeavoured to soothe the afflicted, and to reform the unruly by warning and reproof; but all that I could say in either case was spoken to the wind, and attended with no effect."

There is that in the nature of salvation by grace, when it is truly and experimentally known, which prompts every person to think himself the most extraordinary instance of its power. Accordingly, my brother insisted upon the precedence in this respect, and upon comparing his case with mine, would by no means allow my deliverance to have been so wonderful as his own. He observed, that, "from the beginning, both his manner of life and his connexions had been such as had a natural tendency to blind his eyes, and to confirm and rivet his prejudices against the truth. Blameless in his outward conduct, and having no open immorality to charge himself with, his acquaintance had been with men of the same stamp, who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised the doctrines of the cross. Such were all who from his earliest days he had been used to propose to himself as patterns for his imitation." Not to go further back, such was the clergyman under whom he received the first rudiments of his education; such was the schoolmaster under whom he was prepared for the university, and such were all the most admired characters there with whom he was most ambitious of being connected. He lamented the dark and Christless condition of the place, where learning and morality were all in all, and

where, if a man was possessed of these qualifications, he neither doubted himself, nor did any body else question the safety of his state. He concluded, therefore, that to show the fallacy of such appearances, and to root out the prejudices which long familiarity with them had fastened upon his mind, required a more than ordinary exertion of divine power, and that the grace of God was more clearly manifested in such a work, than in the conversion of one like me, who had no outside righteousness to boast of, and who, if I was ignorant of the truth, was not, however, so desperately prejudiced against it."

His thoughts, I suppose, had been led to this subject, when, one afternoon, while I was writing by the fire-side, he thus addressed himself to the nurse, who sat at his bolster, "Nurse, I have lived three and thirty years, and I will tell you how I have spent them. When I was a boy, they taught me Latin ; and because I was the son of a gentleman, they taught me Greek. These I learned under a sort of private tutor; at the age of fourteen, or thereabouts, they sent me to a public school, where I learned more Latin and Greek, and, last of all, to this place, where I have been learning more Latin and Greek still. Now has not this been a blessed life, and much to the glory of God!" Then, directing his speech to me, he said, "Brother, I was going to say I was born in such a year, but I correct myself; I would rather say, in such a year I came into the world. You know when I was born."

As long as he expected to recover, the souls committed to his care were much upon his mind. One day, when none were present but myself, he prayed thus: "O Lord, thou art good, goodness is thy very essence, and thou art the fountain of wisdom. I am a poor worm, weak and foolish as a child. Thou hast intrusted many souls unto me; and I have not been able to teach them, because I knew thee not myself. Grant me ability, O Lord, for I can do nothing without thee, and give me grace to be faithful.”

In a time of severe and continual pain he smiled in my face, and said, Brother, I am as happy as a king." And the day before he died, when I asked him what sort of a night he had had, he replied, "A sad night, not a wink of sleep." I said, "Perhaps though, your mind has been composed, and have been enabled to pray?" "Yes," said he, "I have

you

endeavoured to spend the hours in the thoughts of God and prayer; I have been much comforted, and all the comfort I got came to me in this way."

The next morning, I was called up to be witness of his last moments. I found him in a deep sleep, lying perfectly still, and seemingly free from pain. I stayed with him till they pressed me to quit the room, and in about five minutes after I had left him he died;-sooner indeed than I expected, though for some days there had been no hopes of his recovery. His death at that time was rather extraordinary; at least I thought it so; for, when I took leave of him the night before, he did not seem worse or weaker than he had been, and, for aught that appeared, might have lasted many days; but the Lord, in whose sight the death of his saints is precious, cut short his sufferings, and gave him a speedy and peaceful departure.

He died at seven in the morning, on the 20th of March, 1770.

COWPER AT OLNEY.

RETURN OF HIS DISORDER. PARTIAL

RECOVERY. MR. NEWTON REMOVES TO LONDON.

THE course of life into which Cowper had been led at Olney, tended to alienate him from the friends whom he loved best. He had dropped his correspondence with Lady Hesketh before she left England; and it seems as if that with Hill would have been dropped also, if Hill had not managed his pecuniary concerns, and clung to him with an affection which was not to be shaken from its hold. It was not till seven weeks after his brother's death that Cowper wrote to him', and then in reply to a letter which, as it touched upon matters of business, required an answer. The account which he acknowledged appears to have been of an uncomfortable kind; for after touching upon what his condition and his expectations might have been, Cowper says, "He to whom I have surrendered myself and all my concerns hath otherwise appointed; and let His will be done! He gives me much which he withholds from others; and if he was pleased to withhold all that makes an outward difference between me and the poor mendicant in the street, it would still become me to say, His will be done!" 1 May 8, 1770.

In the course of the autumn, this true friend again invited him to London. The answer was not cold, but it was chilling:

DEAR JOE,

TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ.

Sept. 25, 1770. I have not done conversing with terrestrial objects, though I should be happy were I able to hold more continual converse with a friend above the skies. He has my heart; but He allows a corner in it for all who show me kindness, and therefore one for you. The storm of sixty-three made a wreck of the friendships I had contracted in the course of many years, yours excepted, which has survived the tempest.

I thank you for your repeated invitation. Singular thanks are due to you for so singular an instance of your regard. I could not leave Olney, unless in a case of absolute necessity, without much inconvenience to myself and others.

W. C. In the ensuing summer Hill wrote to tell him of his marriage. Cowper replied thus:

DEAR JOE,

TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ.

Aug. 27, 1771.

I take a friend's share in all your concerns, so far as they come to my knowledge, and consequently did not receive the news of your marriage with indifference. I wish you and your bride all the happiness that belongs to the state; and the still greater felicity of that state which marriage is only a type of. All those connexions shall be dissolved; but there is an indissoluble bond between Christ and his church, the subject of derision to an unthinking world, but the glory and happiness of all his people.

I join with your mother and sisters in their joy upon the present occasion, and beg my affectionate respects to them, and to Mrs. Hill unknown. Yours ever, W. C.

This seems to have been followed by a silence of ten months, which was broken by an offer of assistance from Hill. The letters in which Cowper declines it, accepts it afterwards in the spirit in which it was sent, and declines a third invitation from his unwearied friend, show the state of his feelings during what has preposterously been called the happy portion of his life.