to eight or nine, but the expense of thread amounted to an eighth of the gross value of the lace. From such wages it was scarcely possible, under the most favourable circumstances, to make any provision against evil days; and the employment is an unhealthy one, as any sedentary employment must be wherein human beings are occupied in summer from six or seven in the morning till dusk, and in winter from daylight till ten or eleven at night. A cry against slavery was raised in Cowper's days; his voice was heard in it; in our own days it has prevailed, and brought about a consummation which was devoutly to be wished; though it were to be wished also, that the emancipation had been graduated and the negroes better prepared for it. A cry has now been raised against that manufacturing system which in our own country extorts from what is called free labour more than slavish toil: it has gone up to heaven; and no spirit of prophecy is required to foresee, that, unless timely and effectual remedies can be applied, it must, in its inevitable consequences, draw vengeance

down.

Cowper's heart was as compassionate as it was gentle. He could not see distress without endeavouring to relieve it. "We do what we can," he writes to Mr. Unwin; "but that can is little. You have rich friends, are eloquent on all occasions, and know how to be pathetic on a proper one. The winter will be severely felt at Olney by many whose sobriety, industry, and honesty recommend them to charitable notice and we think we could tell such persons as Mr. Bouverie, or Mr. Smith, half a dozen tales of distress that would find their way into hearts as feeling as theirs. You will do as you see good; and we, in the mean time, shall remain convinced that you will do your best. Lady Austen will no doubt do something, for she has great sensibility and compassion"."

The application was successful. In his next letter, Cowper says, My dear William, on the part of the poor, and on our part, be pleased to make acknowledgements, such as the occasion calls for, to our beneficent friend, Mr. Smith". I call him ours because, having experienced his kindness to myself in a former instance, and in the present his disinterested readiness to succour the distressed, my ambition will be satisfied with nothing less. He may depend upon the strictest 48 Nov. 4, 1782. 49 Afterwards Lord Carrington.

secrecy; no creature shall hear him mentioned either now or hereafter, as the person from whom we have received this bounty. But when I speak of him, or hear him spoken of by others, which sometimes happens, I shall not forget what is due to so rare a character. I wish, and your mother wishes it too, that he could sometimes take us in his way to Nottingham; he will find us happy to receive a person whom we must needs account it an honour to know. We shall exercise our best discretion in the disposal of the money; but in this town, where the Gospel has been preached so many years, where the people have been favoured so long with laborious and conscientious ministers, it is not an easy thing to find those who make no profession of religion at all and are yet proper objects of charity. The profane, are so profane, so drunken, dissolute, and in every respect worthless, that to make them partakers of his bounty would be to abuse it. We promise, however, that none shall touch it but such as are miserably poor, yet at the same time industrious and honest, two characters frequently united here, where the most watchful and unremitting labour will hardly procure them bread. make none but the cheapest laces, and the price of them is fallen almost to nothing. Thanks are due to yourself likewise, and are hereby accordingly rendered, for waving your claim in behalf of your own parishioners. You are always with them, and they are always, at least some of them, the better for your residence among them, Olney is a populous place, inhabited chiefly by the half-starved and the ragged of the earth, and it is not possible for our small party and small ability, to extend their operations so far as to be much felt among such numbers. Accept, therefore, your share of their gratitude, and be convinced that when they pray for a blessing upon those who have relieved their wants, He that answers that prayer, and when he answers it, will remember his servant at Stock."

We

Fifty years have cancelled the obligation of silence which was then imposed, and the good which was done in secret may and ought to be proclaimed now upon the house top. The disposal of Mr. Smith's bounty led to some interchange of letters between him and Cowper. "We corresponded," says the latter, "as long as the occasion required, and then ceased. Charmed with his good sense, politeness, and liber

ality to the poor, I was indeed ambitious of continuing a correspondence with him, and told him so. Perhaps I had done more prudently had I never proposed it. But warm hearts are not famous for wisdom, and mine was too warm to be very considerate on such an occasion. I have not heard from him since, and have long given up all expectation of it. I know he is too busy a man to have leisure for me, and I ought to have recollected it sooner. He found time to do much good, and to employ us as his agents in doing it, and that might have satisfied me. Though laid under the strictest injunctions of secrecy, both by him, and by you on his behalf, I consider myself as under no obligation to conceal from you the remittances he made. Only, in my turn, I beg leave to request secrecy on your part, because, intimate as you are with him, and highly as he values you, I cannot yet be sure that the communication would please him, his delicacies on this subject being as singular as his benevolence. He sent forty pounds, twenty at a time. Olney has not had such a friend as this many a day; nor has there been an instance at any time, of a few families so effectually relieved, or so completely encouraged to the pursuit of that honest industry, by which their debts being paid, and the parents and children comfortably clothed, they are now enabled to maintain themselves. Their labour was almost in vain before; but now it answers; it earns them bread, and all their other wants are plentifully supplied."

Notwithstanding the character of the population, and the situation of his house, which was neither pleasant nor convenient, Cowper was strongly attached to the spot. "The very stones in the garden wall," said he, are my intimate acquaintance. I should miss almost the minutest object, and be disagreeably affected by its removal: and am persuaded that were it possible I could leave this incommodious nook for a twelvemonth, I should return to it again with rapture, and be transported with the sight of objects which to all the world beside would be at least indifferent; some of them, perhaps, such as the ragged thatch and the tottering walls of the neighbouring cottages, disgusting. 50.5 He had not acknowledged, and perhaps had not felt, a want of society till he became acquainted with Lady Austen; then, indeed, he enjoyed it cor50 July 27, 1783.

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dially. But this enjoyment was ere long disturbed, and both Lady Austen and Mrs. Unwin appear to me to have been wronged by the causes assigned for its disturbance. Lady Austen has been represented as having entertained a hope of marrying Cowper, and Mrs. Unwin as so jealous on that account, that he found it necessary, in consideration of his earlier friend, to break off all connection with the latter one.

That there had ever been an engagement of marriage between Cowper and Mrs. Unwin, has already been contradicted. If any such engagement had been formed, there were no prudential considerations (as has been alleged) to prevent it. They lived together upon their joint incomes, and marriage would have made no difference in their expenditure. Mrs. Unwin was forty-three at the time of her husband's death; hers was a maternal friendship for one who stood in need of maternal care, and as such Cowper regarded it. She was now threescore, and as little likely to be jealous of being supplanted in his affections, as Lady Austen was to form the design of marrying a man in Cowper's peculiar circumstances, which circumstances she was well acquainted with.

They, however, who, in justice to Lady Austen, reject the notion of any matrimonial project on her part, still impute jealousy to Mrs. Unwin,-jealousy of the ascendancy acquired over Cowper by one who being possessed of great wit and vivacity, both enlivened his spirits and stimulated his genius. Mr. Scott is reported to have said upon the subject, Who can be surprised that two women should be continually in the society of one man, and quarrel sooner or later with each other?" It was not long before two women were continually in the society of this very man, and never quarrelled with each other ; and Mrs. Unwin, who was one, is thus spoken of by the other: "She is very far from grave; on the contrary she is cheerful and gay, and laughs de bon cœur upon the smallest provocation. Amidst all the little puritanical words, which fall from her de tems en tems, she seems to have by nature a great fund of gaiety :-great indeed must it have been, not to have been totally overcome by the close confinement in which she has lived, and the anxiety she must have undergone for one whom she certainly loves as well as one human being can love another. I will not say she idolizes him, because that she would think wrong; but she certainly seems to possess S. C.-1

S

the truest regard and affection for this excellent creature, and, as I before said, has, in the most literal sense of those words, no will, or shadow of inclination, but what is his. My account of Mrs. Unwin may seem, perhaps, to you, on comparing my letters, contradictory; but when you consider that I began to write at the moment, and at the first moment that I saw her, you will not wonder. Her character developes itself by degrees; and though I might lead you to suppose her grave and melancholy, she is not so by any means. When she speaks upon grave subjects, she does express herself with a puritanical tone, and in puritanical expressions, but on all other subjects she seems to have a great disposition to cheerfulness and mirth; and indeed, had she not, she could not have gone through all she has. I must say too, that she seems to be very well read in the English poets, as appears by several little quotations, which she makes from time to time, and has a true taste for what is excellent in that way. There is something truly affectionate and sincere in her manner. No one can express more heartily than she does, her joy to have me at Olney; and as this must be for his sake, it is an additional proof of her regard and esteem for him 51. "

Mrs. Unwin's faculties were at this time unimpaired; there was no want of cheerfulness or vivacity in her and she, too, had enlivened the spirits of Cowper, and animated his genius. The causes which broke up their intimacy with Lady Austen, were the same which had formerly suspended it. The fact was thus announced in a letter to Mr. Unwin: "You are going to Bristol. A lady, not long since our very near neighbour, is probably there; she was there very lately. If you should chance to fall into her company, remember, if you please, that we found the connexion, on some accounts, an inconvenient one; that we do not wish to renew it; and conduct yourself accordingly. A character with which we spend all our time should be made on purpose for us: too much, or too little of any single ingredient spoils all. In the instance in question, the dissimili

51 On this extract from a letter of Lady Hesketh's, Mr. Croft observes, that that lady, "having lived much in the world, and amongst the highest circles, was fully competent to discover the characters of others; and it may, therefore, be concluded, that the pleasing description she gave of Mrs. Unwin was a true one; and that her faults would not have escaped the notice of one so well acquainted with human nature."