I said to heart, and began to furnish himself with the best writers upon the controverted points, whose works he read with great diligence and attention, comparing them all the while with the Scripture. None ever truly and ingenuously sought the truth, but they found it. A spirit of earnest inquiry is the gift of God, who never says to any, seek ye my face, in vain. Accordingly, about ten days before his death, it pleased the Lord to dispel all his doubts, and to reveal in his heart the knowledge of the Saviour, and to give him firm and unshaken peace, in the belief of his ability and willingness to save. As to the affair of the fortune-teller, he never mentioned it to me, nor was there any such paper found, as you mention.

I looked over all his papers before I left the place, and had there been such a one, must have discovered it. I have heard the report from other quarters, but no other particulars, than that the woman foretold him when he should die. I suppose there may be some truth in the matter, but whatever he might think of it, before his knowledge of the truth, and however extraordinary her predictions might really be, I am satisfied that he had then received far other views of the wisdom and majesty of God, than to suppose, that he would entrust his secret counsels to a vagrant, who did not mean, I suppose, to

be understood to have received her intelligence from the Fountain of Light, but thought herself sufficiently honoured by any, who would give her credit for a secret intercourse of this kind with the Prince of Darkness.

Mrs. Unwin is much obliged to you for your kind inquiry after her. She is well, I thank God, as usual, and sends her respects to you. Her Son is in the ministry, and has the living of Stock, in Essex. We were last week alarmed with an account of his being dangerously ill; Mrs. Unwin went to see him, and in a few days left him out of danger.

W. C.

The letters of the afflicted poet to his amiable and sympathetic relation have already afforded to my reader an insight into the pure recesses of Cowper's wonderful mind, at some remarkable periods of his life, and if my reader's opinion of these letters is consonant to my own, he will feel concerned, as I do, to find a chasm of ten years in this valuable correspondence; the more so as it was chiefly occasioned by a new, a long, and severe visitation of that mental malady, which repeatedly involved in calamitous oppression the superior faculties of this interesting sufferer. His extreme depression seems not

to have recurred immediately on the shock of his Brother's death. In the autumn of the year in which he sustained that affecting loss, he wrote the following serious but animated letter to Mr. Hill.

LETTER XXXV.

TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ.

DEAR JOE,

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 his sequestered life, he seems to have been much consoled and entertained by the society of his pious friend Mr. Newton, in whose religious pursuits he appears to have taken an active part, by the composition of sixty-eight Hymns. Mr. Newton wished and expected him to have contributed a much larger number, as he has declared in the Preface to that collection of Hymns, which contains these devotional effusions of Cowper, distinguished by the initial letter of his name. The volume, composed for the inhabitants of Olney, was the joint produc-. tion of the divine and the poet, and intended, as the former expressly says in his Preface, “As a monument to perpetuate the remembrance " of an intimate and endeared friendship-With "this pleasing view" (continues Mr. Newton), "I "entered upon my part, which would have been "smaller than it is, and the book would have "appeared much sooner and in a very different "form, if the wise, though mysterious, Provi"dence of God, had not seen fit to cross my "wishes. We had not proceeded far upon our

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proposed plan, before my dear friend was pre"vented by a long and affecting indisposition, "from affording me any farther assistance.". The severe illness of the poet, to which these expressions relate, began in 1773, and extended, with brief intervals of brighter health, beyond

the date of the Preface (from which they are quoted), February the fifteenth, 1779.

These social labours of the poet with an exemplary man of God, for the purpose of promoting simple piety among the lower classes of the people, must have been delightful in a high degree to the benevolent heart of Cowper; and I am persuaded he alludes to his own feelings on this subject, in the following passage from his Poem on Conversation.

True bliss, if man may reach it, is compos'd
Of hearts in union, mutually disclos'd:

And farewell else all hope of pure delight!

Those hearts should be reclaim'd, renew'd, upright;
Bad men, profaning friendship's hallow'd name,
Form, in its stead, a covenant of shame:

But souls, that carry on a blest exchange

Of joys, they meet with, in their heav'nly range,
And with a fearless confidence make known

The sorrows, sympathy esteems its own;

Daily derive increasing light and force

From such communion; in their pleasant course,

Feel less the journey's roughness, and it's length;
Meet their opposer's with united strength;

And one in heart, in interest, and design,
Gird up each other to the race divine.

Such fellowship in literary labour, for the noblest of purposes, must be delightful indeed, if attended with success, and at all events, it is