་ John Newton's; saw John Newton's house, a "I crossed the bridge, destined, like the Brigs | subject to the wear and tear of a school, its of Ayr and the Bridge of Sighs,' long to outlive soiled walls and broken plaster exhibit a disits stone and lime existence; passed the church-mal appearance, yet it is easy to call up the vision of former comfort, when it was the scene of "intimate delight," "fire-side enjoyments," and "home-born happiness," so graphically sketched, snug building, much garnished with greenery; and then entered Olney proper-the village that was Olney a hundred years ago. Unlike most of the villages of central England, it is built, not of brick, but chiefly at least of a calcareous yellow stone from the Oolite, which, as it gathers scarce any lichen, or moss, looks clean and fresh after the lapse of centuries; and it is not until the eye catches the dates on the peaked gable points, 1682, 1611, 1590, that one can regard the place as no hastily run-up town of yesterday, but as a place that had a living in other times. The main street, which is also the Bedford road, broadens towards the middle of the village into a roomy angle, in shape not very unlike the capacious pocket of a Scotch housewife of the old school; one large elm tree rises in the centre; and just opposite the elm, among the houses that skirt the base of the angle-i. e. the bottom of the pocket-we see an old-fashioned house, considerably taller than the others, and differently tinted, for it is built of red brick, somewhat ornately bordered with stone. And this tall briek house was Cowper's home." For this house, to which Mrs. Unwin and Cowper removed in the autumn of 1767, and Cowper removed in the autumn of 1767, one of the best that Olney could then boast, a rent of about twelve pounds was paid, their establishment consisting of one maid-servant, a gardener, and footman. nally, its aspect answers well to the occupant's description of it-that of a place built for the purpose of incarceration, and yet, while familiar in the winter months with an atmosphere loaded with raw vapors rising from flooded meadows, sitting in a parlor over a cellar filled with water, and celebrating his removal from the spot as a gaol-delivery, he had boasted in the fervor of song, "Had I the choice of sublunary good, What could I wish that I possess not here?" An orchard belonging to another proprietor separated the garden behind from John Newton's parsonage, which long bore the name of the Guinea Field, from that sum being yearly paid for the right of way through it. Next to the main street is the farfamed parlor, "That looks the north wind full in the face," from the window of which the recluse often watched for the post-boy bringing his letters -almost the only link that connected him with the busy world-and first caught sight of Lady Austen, the fashionable and fascinating stranger, shopping opposite. Long "Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, And while the bubbling and loud hissing urn Throws up a steamy column, and the cups That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each, So let us welcome peaceful evening in." The room, shorn of its material honors, and to be demolished in the end, will yet live in history, as a site consecrated by graceful humanities and the efforts of Christian genius. There sat Mrs. Unwin knitting, Cowper reading or transcribing, the hares, Puss, Tiney, and Bess, gambolling on the carpet. There the adventures of the famous horseman were first related over night, the ballad of John Gilpin making its appearance the next day soon to win and keep popular favor, obtaining for the then unknown author the applause of Mrs. Siddons in the metropolis. There the Sister Anne of the circle, mistress of his muse, suggested his greatest performance, the Task, original in thought, cadence, and structure, giving him the sofa upon which she sat for a subject, well knowing the stores he could bring out of his own mind to hinge upon months, did he justify her confidence. Campthe whimsical theme. Nobly, in fourteen the history of a piece of furniture promising bell, remarking upon the origin of this poem, so little to the reader yet producing so much, aptly compares it to a river rising from a playful little fountain, gathering beauty and magnitude as it proceeds. However shunning the throng, the world would sometimes break in upon the secluded life of Cowper, as when the Parliamentary candidate was ushered into the parlor with an election mob at his heels, seeking his patronage as one of the magnates of the town with a seducing shake of the hand, and informing the bard of his consequence in the community-a new revelation to him. There likewise was he, in the dark season of 1773, a silent tenant of the room, dead alike to politics, literature, and friendship, bound in the fetters of despair, the iron entering into his soul. The premises of the old house are of greater interest. The neighboring elms, in one of which was the bird-nest, spared by the storm to the rifled, suggesting the fable which once read take firm hold upon the of the raven, are no longer standing; but memory. He was in this favorite recess in the garden, with its gravel walk thirty the June of 1783, listening to the distant yards long, where Cowper reared cucum- thunder and pattering showers, and wishbers, fed his pigeons, and manufactured ing for a subject to write about. Before verses in the summer, stil remains a gar- the summer closed, the Task had comden, though not so trim as when he tended menced, in which the notice occurs of the its beds. remarkable physical phenomena of the season, the most extraordinary year in that respect with which we are acquainted. "Sure there is need of social intercourse, "I found," says Mr. Miller, "the garden, like the house, much changed. It had been broken up into two separate properties; and the proprietors having run a wall through the middle of it, one must now seek the pippin-tree which the poet planted, in one little detached bit of garden, and the lath-and-plaster summer-house, which, when the weather was fine, used to form his writing-To preach the general doom. When were the winds room, in another. The Ribston pippin looks an Let slip with such a warrant to destroy? older tree, and has more lichen about it, though When did the waves so haughtily o'erleap far from tall for its age, than might be ex- Their ancient barriers, deluging the dry? pected of a tree of Cowper's planting; but it is Fires from beneath and meteors from above, now seventy-nine years since the poet came to Portentous, unexampled, unexplained, Olney, and in less than seventy-nine years young And crazy earth has had her shaking fits Have kindled beacons in the skies; and the old fruit-trees become old ones. The little summerhouse, maugre the fragility of its materials, is in a Is it a time to wrangle when the props More frequent, and foregone her usual rest. wonderful good state of keeping; the old lath And pillars of our planet seem to fail, still retains the old line; and all the square inches And Nature with a dim and sickly eye and finger-breadths of the plaster, inside and To wait the close of all?” out, we find as thickly covered with names as the space in our ancient Scotch copies of the Solemn League and Covenant.' Cowper would have marvelled to have seen his little summer-house for little it is, scarce larger than a four-posted bedstead, written like the roll described in sacred vision, 'within and without." " It was Cowper calls this spot a commodious ora- "He has no hope that never had a fear." In February, the earthquakes commenced by which Calabria and Sicily were desolated. In June, the most tremendous volcanic outburst on record occurred in Iceland, and continued to the close of August, when the Skaptar Jokul discharged a mass of matter which, accumulated together, would yield a second Peak of Teneriffe. Severe thunderstorms prevailed in England through the summer; but the most singular event was the veil of dry fog which overspread Europe for a month, giving to nature "a dim and sickly eye," most likely a gaseous exhalation from the disturbed districts dispersed through the atmosphere. "The sun," says Cowper, June 13,"continues to rise and set without his rays, and hardly shines at noon, even in a cloudless sky. At eleven last night, the moon was a dull red; she was nearly at her highest elevation, and had the color of a heated brick. She would naturally, I know, have such an appearance looking through a misty atobtain for so long a time, and in a country where mosphere; but that such an atmosphere should it has not happened in my remembrance even in winter, is rather remarkable. We have had more thunder-storms than have consisted well with the peace of the fearful maidens in Olney, though not so many as have happened in places not far dis tant nor so violent.' June 29, he writes, "We never see the sun but shom of his beams. The trees are scarce discernible at a mile's distance. He, sets with the face of a red-hot salamander, and rises (as I learn from report) with the same complexion. Such a phenomenon at the end of June has occasioned much speculation among the cognoscenti at this place. Some fear to go to bed, expecting an earthquake; some declare that he neither rises nor sets where he did, and assert with great confidence that the day of judgment is at hand." Similar fears prevailed in other places, and to quiet them at Paris, Lalande addressed a letter to one of the journals.** For fourteen years Cowper abode at Olney, rarely quitting the place for a day, but often abroad in the fields and highways around it. Its human species in general do not figure to advantage in his pages. Too much ale, their besetting sin, disgraced Nat. Gee the clerk, and another had to say Amen for him. Spite of the prognosticated trump of doom, there were the usual gatherings on Sunday morning to the taps in Silver End, the St. Giles of the town, as if the cordial might be needed by way of preparation for the crisis. One of Newton's *The best account of the fog is given by M. Arago, in his "Scientific Notices of Comets," inserted in the French Annuaire for 1832, replying in the negative to the question, "Were the Dry Fogs of 1783 and 1831 occasioned by the tail of a comet?" Sec. 11, c. 3. immediate successors tried to put down this Sabbath-breaking by the strong arm of the law, but a row ensued, in which the constable lost clothing and skin, the gentler sex being foremost in the riot. Newton indeed labored not in vain, but public reformation marches slowly. There was no Sunday school in his time. Cowper describes children seven years of age infesting the streets at night with their curses and ribald songs. When Newton's curacy descended to Scott, his influence came not along with it. He was unpopular at Olney, and was burnt in effigy at Pingewick. Scott marrying a drunken fellow and a pregnant lady, the man betraying his brutality in the service, and the church crowded with idlers equally forgetful of decorum, is an incident which sufficiently proclaims the low state of public manners. It might plead, however, the sanction of high example from which it gathered strength. 66 "In this part of the world at least," says Cowper, many of the most profligate characters are the very men to whom the morals, and even the souls, of others are intrusted; and I cannot suppose the diocese of Lincoln, or this part of it in "The fog of 1783 commenced nearly on the same particular, is more unfortunate in that respect than day (18th of June) at places very distant from each the rest of the kingdom. Here are seven or eight other, such as Paris, Avignon, Turin, and Padua." in the neighborhood of Olney who have shaken (We see from Cowper's letters that it was at Ol-hands with sobriety, and who would rather supney on the 13th. The Skaptar Jokul exploded on press the Church were it not for the emoluments the 12th, but earthquakes became violent on the 5th annexed, than discourage the sale of strong beer and 6th.) in a single instance." "It extended from the northern coast of Africa to Sweden; it was also observed over a great part of North America. "It continued more than a month. "The air, that at least of the lower regions, did not appear to be its vehicle; for at certain points the fog came with a north wind, and at others with east and south winds. "Travellers found it on the highest points of the Alps. The abundant rains which fell in June and July, and the strongest wind, did not dissipate it. "In Languedoc, its density was sometimes such that the sun was not visible in the morning until it was at the height of twelve degrees above the horizon. During the rest of the day appeared red, and could be looked at by the naked eye. "This fog, or smoke, as some meteorologists called it, was accompanied with a disagreeable smell. "The most distinguishing property it had from ordinary fogs, which are generally very damp, was, by all reports, its dryness. "Finally, it is well worthy of remark, the fog of 1783 seemed to be endowed with a kind of phosphorescent virtue, with an inherent light. I find, at least in the narratives of observers, that it shed, even at midnight, a light which they compared to that of the moon at full, and was sufficient to show objects distinctly at 200 metres, above 650 feet. I add, in order to remove all uncertainty regarding the origin of the light, that it was a new moon at the period of the observation." These notices of a rural English locality sixty years ago, to which the counties south of the Tweed then supplied many a parallel, are not without interest, as illustrating the difficulties which the few evangelical clergy of that day had to contend with, as well as the advance which their cause has made among the members of their sacred profession, a result towards which the exhibitions of the "cassock'd huntsman" and the "fiddling priest" contributed. Referring to Cowper's clerical contemporaries affords an opportunity to correct a mistake which reflects dishonor one who deserved it not. Speaking upon of his satires, Mr. Campbell remarks that they were never personal, except in the instance of Occiduus, who was known to mean the Rev. C. Wesley.* "Occiduus is a pastor of renown, When he has prayed and preached the Sabbath down, * Specimens of the British Poets, vii. 358. With wire and catgut he concludes the day, Had summon'd them to serve his golden god; Will not the sickliest sheep of every flock "I have by me a list of names, in the handwriting of the author of these letters, of the persons who engaged in prayer, and it is interesting to observe among them the frequent recurrence of the name of the poet Cowper, from the year when he came to reside at Olney, to the year 1773, when a dark cloud came over his mind, and peculiar views of himself unhappily prevented him from entering a place of worship to the end of his days. So strictly conscientious was this interesting man, that I have frequently seen him sit down at table when others have risen, to implore a blessing, and take his knife and fork in hand, to signify, I presume, that he had no right to pray.”* Charles Wesley was not the man to have or to sanction Sunday routs and concerts. Martin Madan was the person in question, Upon Newton becoming a metropolitan recchaplain at the Lock Hospital, a popular tor, or, as he facetiously termed his ecclepreacher, and musical in his taste, who lost siastical translation, contracting marriage character and fame upon the publication of with a London saint of the name of Molly "Thelyphthora," a treatise in which he Woolnoth, the social meeting ceased to appeared as the avowed advocate of po- prosper. However good a commentator in lygamy. Cowper's letters contain allusions his study, the Olney folk turned up their which completely clear up this point. He noses at the viva voce expositions of Scott, speaks of having given a squint at the au- and preferred hearing one of the lay brethor of "Thelyphthora" in the "Progress thren exercise his gifts, the unconsecrated of Error;" and again referring to the Ma-place allowing of the oration. But the redans, Martin and Spencer, he says: “Of the former, I have heard that my Task is his theme in all companies, but that terrible book of his has made me more than half afraid to meddle with him, lest he should tease me for my opinion of it, in which case I should be obliged to execrate it even to his face. I gave him a broad look of disapprobation in my Progress of Error." The name Occiduus (western) fitted Madan, the Lock Hospital being at the west end of London. gular-bred divine maintained his prerogative, and stoutly resisted such an uncanonical proceeding. Newton, aware of the crook in the lot of his successor, acknow You are required and enjoined to appear personally at our Episcopal seat in Olney, on the "present Wednesday, 19th August, to dine with the Rev. Henry Venn (Vicar of Huddersfield), and with us. And hereof you are not to fail. One building, 66 a place for social prayer," which two of the "Olney Hymns) commemorate, has entirely disappeared. This was an old untenanted mansion, in which Newton rented a room, and commenced a service of prayer and exposition, in which the frequenters of the meeting united with the church-goers. In a collection of letters recently, for the first time, published (February, 1847), by the Rev. T. P. Bull, of Newport Pagnell, addressed by Newton to his father,* an interesting note occurs referring to this service: * Described by Cowper as" a Dissenter, but a liberal one-a man of letters and of genius-a master of a fine imagination, or rather, not master of it. He can be lively without levity, and pensive without dejection. Such a man is Mr. Bull; but he smokes tobacco. Nothing is perfect!" Playfully he used to address him as Carissima TaurorumMon aimable et très cher ami-and Newton as mon cher Taureau-Dear and Reverend Bull. In the collection of letters referred to above, Newton, as a similarly imperfect being, anticipates a journey from London into Bucks, and then Given at our den-die supra dicto To the Rev. William Bull. JOHN NEWTON. You receive it Tuesday night." Under date October 27, 1786, we meet with a somewhat singular allusion Olney Hymns and Olney Homer! I understand you; when shall I come to my Nil admirari. I find, after all my supposed acquaintance with the human heart, there are windings and depths in it of which I know no more than of the dark unfathomable caves of ocean. When I have puzzled and grieved sufficiently about things which I cannot account for nor remedy, then I try to leave them with the Lord. He alone can make the crooked straight. It is singular indeed-and we may say of this turn, as of all that went before it,' God moves in a mysterious way.' We may perhaps gather from this that Newton, who argued ill to Cowper, in a religious respect, from his intimacy with the Throckmortons, did so likewise from his attention to Homer. Recent Letters, p. 221. * Ibid., p. 57. ledges, in the letters before us, to an inad- | the stream at Olney; in the direction of vertence in setting a-foot the meeting :— its flow from thence is the Poplar Field; on the opposite side lies the landscape overlooked by the road to Weston, which forms the subject of the picture so exquisitely drawn, and so faithful to the scene: "The next time (says he) I am young, and begin to preach in a country place, I intend not to do just as I did at Olney. Particularly, I will have all the work to myself in public meetings, except the singing. Our prayer meetings and praying men were, I think, useful for the first seven years upon the whole; but afterwards great inconveniences ensued."* It is time now to quit the man-made town "The good Squire Cowper (she said), well did she remember him, in his white cap, and his sui! of green, turned up with black. She knew the Lady Hesketh too. A kindly lady was the Lady Hesketh; there are few such ladies now-a-days; she used to put coppers into her little velvet bag every time she went out, to make the children she met happy; and both she and Mrs. Unwin were remarkably kind to the poor. The road to Weston-Underwood looks down upon the valley of the Ouse. Were there not water lilies in the river in their season? I asked; and did not Cowper sometimes walk out along its banks? Oh, yes, she replied, and I remember the dog Beau, too, who brought the lily ashore to him. Beau was a smart, petted little creature, with silken ears, had a great deal of red about him."" and "How oft upon yon eminence our pace Mr. Miller sketches the general appear ance of Weston, with its remarkable spots which form all that remains of the house of -the few tall walls and gateway columns the Throckmortons-the cottage, small and homely, in which Scott reasoned himself out of Socinianism into Calvinism, and wrote the Force of Truth-and Cowper's residence, into which the tourist does not. scem to have sought admission. It would have been readily granted. The two lines are there, in the fair distinct handwriting of the poet, on a panel of the window-shutter The Ouse will remain associated with the in his bed-room, which expresses his feelname of Cowper, like the Avon with Shak-ings on quitting the place for Norfolk: speare, the Thames with Pope, the Trent with Kirk White, the Duddon with Wordsworth, and the Tweed with Scott. It has nothing of itself to arrest attention-no splash or murmur, no breadth or clearness, and may be said more to creep than flow; but there it is, in the quiet valley, one of the commonest of streams, yet having a high consecration to invite the gazer, received from his communion with its waters whose " eyes drank the rivers with delight." A few touches-"Ouse's silent tide"-its"flags and reeds"-its "sinuous course"-describe all its characteristics. The bridge, with its "wearisome but needful length," in the floods of winter, crosses *Recent Letters, p. 132. Farewell, dear scenes, for ever closed to me; Oh, for what sorrows must I now exchange ye! July 28, 1795." Nothing beyond a temporary absence was then contemplated; but the presentiment was verified, by the separation proving final, and by the deep mental anguish in which nearly five subsequent years were passed. He saw the Ouse for the last time on his journey, by moonlight, from the churchyard of St. Neots, where also the last gleam of cheerfulness lighted up his countenance that marked his life. The Wilderness, the Lime Walk, the Alcove, the Spinnie, the Rustic Bridge, Kilwick's echoing wood, the Peasant's Nest, are all at Weston-sites which had been |