in the summer of 1795, through the energetic | upon and illustrate Cowper's mental disorkindness of Cowper's young relative, John ders. Of these, indeed, we have given only Johnson. From that time, Cowper and Mrs. a part. In no other instance within our Unwin, as long as they lived, were under Mr. knowledge, has the life-long history of a disJohnson's care. His home was at East eased mind, been so minutely, so graphically, Dereham, in Norfolk, and there, after trying so powerfully told, as was this of Cowper's, two or three other places, the interesting in- in his admirable narrative and inimitable letvalid was settled. His delusions and his ters. When to this we add the fact a fact gloom continued. Now and then he wrote inexplicable and even perplexing whenever a short letter to Lady Hesketh, full of sorrow, met with--that a delusion so entire and disterror, and despair. His kinsman spared no tressing could take and keep possession of an effort to relieve, to rouse, to entertain him. intellect, in other respects remarkably bright, "The only relief which he seemed to experi- and sportive, and clear; when we consider ence was in listening to works of fiction; his high reputation as a writer both of prose these still retained their charm." To these, and verse; his manly, English common volume after volume, he would listen, sad and sense; the purity and excellence of his charsilent. acter; the tenderness of his spirit, and the sweetness of his affections-qualities which attracted to him in his hermitage so many living friends, and which have endeared his name and memory to uncounted thousands, who have known him only through his writings-we have perhaps suggested a sufficient justification for the length and minuteness of our narrative. At the close of the year 1796, his faithful and beloved "Mary" quietly departed. It is not easy to read, unmoved, the story of his deportment on that occasion! We cannot stop to describe the absurd attempt of Hayley to convince Cowper that he ought not to think so ill of himself, by getting testimonials from some of the greatest men in the realm, to the effect that the poet had done good But there are other considerations which service to the cause of morals and religion. give interest to the insanity of Cowper. BiThurlow, in his letter to Lord Kenyon, notographers and critics have discussed, with unaptly said, "I have been pressed by one mad poet to ask of you for another, a favor which savors of the malady of both." wide diversity of opinion, its character and causes. The melancholy which ushered in his first attack assumed a religious form. From the commencement of this attack From that attack he passed into a state of he had been living under the constant appre-high religious enjoyment, which continued hension of being instantly and bodily hurried for several years without a cloud, and then away into misery which awaited him. This he became the victim of religious doubts, or idea was sufficient to deter him from all rather of a settled conviction that he was attempts at literary labor. At length (Sep-rejected of God. At St. Albans, under the tember 1797,) he so far yielded to persuasion, guidance of Dr. Cotton, and afterwards under as to resume the revision of his Homer. To that of Mr. Newton, he adopted and ever this employment, for nearly two years more after firmly held the Calvanistic faith. That of his sorrowful old age, he devoted himself this faith gave shape and color to the imagiwith unwearied assiduity, and did not stop nations which haunted him in later years, is until he had completed the task, and written more than probable. But there is not the a preface for his new edition. A few days slightest reason for supposing that his insanafter this, he wrote "The Castaway,"-aity, as some have intimated, was due to any piece, which considering the circumstances, such cause. We have seen that predisposing has always seemed to us one of the most tendencies to mental disease appeared even remarkable, as well as one of the most beau- in his childhood, and we know under what tiful and affecting poems ever penned. He circumstances of anxiety and apprel ension, survived a year longer, struggling constantly those tendencies were at length developed against the pressure of mental disease, but into madness. Had the affair of the clerkwith no sensible relief from it powers. He ship never occurred, Cowper might never died April, 1800, at the age of sixty-nine. have become insane. But the probabilities In this brief sketch we have endeavored are otherwise. Some other trouble,—some to confine ourselves to the facts which bear other excitement-was sure to come, and there, in his brain or blood, ever ready to patient as soon as possible to some well-conquicken, were the seeds of disease. ducted asylum for the insane? A year or two since, the Rev. Dr. Cheever Southey thought it was injudicious in published a volume entitled "Lectures on the Cowper's friends to encourage in him the Life, Genius, and Insanity of Cowper." Dr. idea that his cure at St. Albans was someCheever is greatly dissatisfied with Southey's thing supernatural. Cheever thinks that biography of the poet, and thinks he has only spiritual blindness prevented the biodone injustice both to Cowper and Newton.grapher from taking the same view that the While we are far from regarding Mr. Southey poet took. In regard to this belief of Cowper, as a faultless biographer, or as beyond the he remarks: "Yet in the purest and serenest reach of misconception and prejudice, we are light, both of reason and of faith, Cowper decidedly unwilling to accept the reverend himself was so fully persuaded that his redoctor's version of Cowper's mental troubles. covery at St. Albans, and his happiness afterWe can not perceive that he understands any ward, had come from God and his grace-he better than did Mr. Newton and Mrs. Unwin knew this with such perfect assurance, by the the nature of that derangement. To des- spirit of God bearing witness with his own cribe as machinations of the devil, the man- spirit-that even in a subsequent access of ifest effects of cerebral disorder, seems to us his malady, and under the depths of what no less mischievous than it is absurd. This seemed the darkness of absolute despair, he idea he repeatedly advances. For instance: declared that it was not in the power of the "Now this delusion of Cowper, that he was arch-enemy himself to deprive him of that cut off forever from God's mercy, was cer- conviction." Did the doctor, while writing tainly from below, not from above; the work the above forget, that with equally perfect of an Enemy, not of a Friend; yet even the assurance, Cowper also knew that the same practical power of that delusion, and the God had afterwards imposed on him the duty result on which Satan had relied, could be of self-murder, and that for his sin in not prevented by the omnipotence of God's in- obeying the mandate when it was in his visible grace." And again: "Under this ex- power, he was consigned to endless perditreme severity of discipline, permitted as tion ? Cowper was to be sifted as wheat by Satan, to be distracted with frightful dreams in the night time, &c." And this: "We do not wonder that Newton and Mrs. Unwin, and his strongest-minded and most religious friends spoke of it, and regarded it as the power of the enemy. With the New Testament before them, what could seem a more palpable and graphic renewal of those malignant, infernal possessions, which drew the compassion of our Saviour, and required the exercise of his omnipotence? Justly did they reason and believe that something more than a natura! power was here at work, and that only a supernatural interposition could effect a cure." Acting on this just reasoning and belief, Mrs. Unwin and Mr. Newton, after Cowper's severe attack in 1773, neglected, for several months, all remedial measures, apparently deeming it wrong even to consult Dr. Cotton. Were a similar case to be thrown upon the hands of Dr. Cheever, would he attempt, at home, to exorcise the demon by argument and prayer? or would he send the poor THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE. 2 We have already mentioned the fact that Cowper's willingness to destroy himself, in conformity with what he regarded as a divine behest, was regarded by Newton as an evidence of pious submission-a mark and proof of divine grace in his soul. We are surprised to find that the reverend doctor repeats and endorses this strange opinion. That Cowper was a Christian, humble, sincere, and true, it is impossible to doubt. But the evidence of this consoling fact rests on other grounds than these delusions of a disordered brain. To the affair with Teedon the doctor devotes a short chapter. He is indignant that Southey should speak so lightly of poor Teedon's intercessions. After making a number of hits at the Church of England and at Lord Mahon, and after a short anecdote respecting Archbishop Usher, he concludes thus: "We can see no reason why Mr. Teedon might not offer as earnest and acceptable prayer for Cowper, as Mr. Talbot for Archbishop Secker. And if the archbishop needed such prayer when dying, and was not insane in asking for it, the poet also might have need of it living; and his seeking for it was not necessarily a proof of insanity, but the reverse." could fill many pages. One remarkable instance of the delusion under which Cowper labored we must not omit. This was a belief that in the stillness of his chamber he often heard words and sentences audibly spoken. Thus, in his own early narrative, he states that in his first attempt at suicide, while he was actually hanging by his garter from the top of the door, he "distinctly heard a voice say three times, 'Tis over!' Though I am sure of the fact, and was so at the time, yet it did not at all alarm me, or affect my resolution." During the period of the Teedon voices almost daily, and he regularly communicated the sentences or phrases which thus came into his head, with an evident conviction of their supernatural origin. A specimen or two must suffice "Dear sir; I awoke this morning with these words, relating to my work, loudly and distinctly spoken: Apply assistance in my case, indigent and necessitous.' And about three mornings since with these: 'It will not be by common and ordinary means.' It seems better, therefore, that I shall wait till it shall please God to set my wheels in motion, than make another beginning only to be obliterated like the two former. I have also heard these words on the same subject: 'Meantime raise an expectation and desire of it among the people."" Briefly, the story of Teedon is as follows. He was a poor schoolmaster, living in Olney, and dependent on charity, which he received through the agency of Cowper. From some slight notices in Cowper's earlier letters, we infer that he was a weak, conceited, but wellmeaning body, whose pompous speeches sometimes amused the quick-sighted bard. But at a later period-after Mr. Unwin's death, and after his mother's faculties began correspondence, he seems to have heard to fail-Cowper, with her consent and aid, began to consult Teedon, " as a person whom the Lord was pleased to answer in prayer." As Southey represents the matter, there is no suspicion of knavery on the part of the simple-hearted creature. But he had been accustomed to regard Cowper and Mrs. Unwin as greatly his superiors; and when he found them disposed to pay such deference to his spiritual gifts and power, "neither his vanity nor his modesty would allow him to question their discernment." He was first consulted in regard to the question of Cowper's undertaking the edition of Milton -not, as Mrs. Unwin wrote to him, because the poet apprehended any difficulty in the performance, but to ascertain whether he were providentially called to it or not. As to the result, she tells him that Mr. Cowper "is now clearly persuaded, by Mr. Teedon's experiences and gracious notices, that he is called to it, and is therefore perfectly easy." From this time until the last access of his malady, he continued to consult Teedon-not only as to every proposed movement and engagement, but in reference to his hopes and fears, and all his dreaming and waking delusions. The oracular responses which he received in return he carefully recorded, until he had filled volumes. The record shows that though he was constantly receiving encouragement from Teedon-assurances of relief soon to be vouchsafed—and though his faith in the man, as a favored recipient of communications from Heaven, appears to have remained firm, still he derived but little comfort from the schoolmaster's revelations. With the statements of his experience, his dreams, and his illusions, sent by this great man to poor Teedon, and proving, as we are told, not his insanity, but the reverse, we At another time he wrote thus: "At four this morning I started out of a dream, in which I seemed sitting before the fire, and very close to it, in great trouble; when, suddenly stamping with my foot, and springing suddenly from my seat, I awoke and heard these words: I hope the Lord will carry me through it.' This needs no interpretation. It is plainly a forewarning of woe to come." On New Year's day, 1793, he wrote to Teedon,-" This morning I am in rather a more cheerful frame of mind than usual, having had two notices of a more comfortable cast than the generality of mine. I waked, saying, 'I shall perish,' which was immediately answered by a vision of a wine-glass, and these words, 'A whole glass;' in allusion, no doubt, to the famous story of Mrs. Honeywood." For that story, see Fuller's account, as quoted by Southey. We add one of his dreams. "In less than a week," he says to Teedon, "I was visited with a horrible dream, in which I seemed to be taking a final leave of my dwelling, and every object with circumstances would fill me." Such were which I have been most familiar, on the even- the visions, the fancied monitions, the vagaing before my execution. I felt the tenderest ries of a diseased imagination, which he regret at the separation, and looked about transmitted to Teedon, in the hope that for something durable to carry with me as a through his prevailing intercessions, they memorial. The iron hasp of the garden might be explained or counteracted, and in door presenting itself, I was on the point of regard to which Teedon undertook, and taking that; but recollecting that the heat of actually pretended to furnish, the results of the fire, in which I was going to be tormented, his own special communications from above. would fuse the metal, and that it would Whether the judgment of Southey, or that therefore only serve to increase my insup- of Dr. Cheever, in regard to the Teedon portable misery, I left it. I then awoke in business, is the wiser one, may easily be all the horror with which the reality of such settled. altogether improbable by that large class of the community which has assigned this contested honor to Stoke Pogis. I should add, that the scenery adjacent to Thanington Churchyard, and many of its rural circumstances, are very much as my correspondent has described them,-and, further, that I think the epithet "neglected ”— for reasons that I need not now explain-must have been far more applicable to it a hundred years ago than to a churchyard like that of Stoke Pogis, placed as it is, in the midst of a park, and very near a large house then occupied by Viscountess Cobham, and, moreover only distant four miles from Windsor Castle.Athenæum. SCENE OF GRAY'S "ELEGY."-I should feel tree, which, from the circumstances I have had much obliged if you would do me the favor of related to me by my old friend, appears to have inserting in the columns of the Atheneum the stood at the elbow of the poet,-and the farm substance of the statement which I now beg to close by,-and the ivy-covered tower,-and the communicate to you. Not long since, in the curfew" (meaning the eight o'clock cathedralcourse of a conversation in which I was en- bell)" added to the picturesque churchyard,— gaged with a physician of the city of Canter- are all closely identified with the imagery so bury, lately retired from practice, it was men- beautifully displayed by Gray."-Such are the tioned by him that the "country churchyard reasons, grounded, as you see, on internal as well to which Gray was indebted for the imagery as external testimony, which my correspondent which he has introduced into his beautiful alleges in support of his opinion on this subElegy is not Stoke Pogis,-as it has been ject. Whether they will appear to be probable so generally supposed,-but that of Thaning-ones to yourself, is, I think, a doubtful matter; ton, which lies on the sloping bank of the river whilst I am sure that they will be pronounced Stour, about one mile and a half above the city of Canterbury. On my writing to him afterwards on the same subject, I was favored with a reply wherein he states his reasons, pretty much as follows, for believing Thanington Churchyard to be the scene of the Elegy:"-" In reply to your letter, I can only repeat what I received from the lips of my old friend spontaneously in the course of conversation, as I was seated at her window, in St. George's Place, to witness the return of Sir E. Knatchbull from Barham Downs, after his election for the county in 1835. She then affirmed that she was well acquainted with the author of the Elegy,' Mr. Gray, who was an occasional visitor to Mr. Drew, a medical man of this city, and that the spot which gave rise PIN. The origin of this familiar term is to the poem was Thanington Churchyard. evidently, the French epingle, which, like the Mrs. Lukyn could have had no other object in Italian spilla, is supposed to come from spinula. giving me this information than that of afford- I, however, regard rather spiculum-a as the ing a pleasure to me, as a long-known friend of root, the n being inserted in the French word, as her and her family,-for both she and her sister ex. gr. in concombre, from cucumis. This inserhad long been patients of my father, and were tion of n is to be found in many languages, as well acquainted with me when a child. The ɛixw, lingo, &c.; it is particularly frequent in old lady died in the spring of 1835, at the age Spanish, as trenza, tress; ponzona, poison. It of eighty-three. She was the last surviving would not be easy, I apprehend, to give a clea. child of the Rev. Ant. Lukyn, late Rector of example of the insertion of g except in our own St. Mildred's, Canterbury, and Vicar of Re-impregnable, from the French imprenable; and culver, who died in 1778, as appears from the it has always been a puzzle to me to devise how obituary of the Gentleman's Magazine. Mrs. it could have come there. Some other cases Lukyn's memory, therefore, which seems to have which occur in the English language are owing been fully impressed with the fact, may well have to the nasals in the French words whence they been carried back to the period when Gray visited are derived. The e in Sclavonian may also be Canterbury. I feel assured, then, that the yew-noticed.—Notes and Queries. From The Quarterly Review. 1. Transactions of the Institution of Civil tion 3. Account of the Formation of the Railway over Chat Moss, 1826-30. By John Dixon, C.E. (MS.) THE traveller by railway sees comparatively little of the formidable character of the works along which he is carried. His object is merely to pass over a given space in the shortest time and with the greatest comfort. He scarcely bestows a thought upon the amount of hard work that has been done, the anxieties that have been borne, the skill and contrivance that have been exercised, and the difficulties that have been overcome, in providing for him a smooth road through the country, across valleys, under hills, upon bogs, over rivers, or even arms of the sea. Yet for boldness of design, science of construction, and successful completion, the gigantic engineering works executed in connexion with our railways greatly surpass, in point of magnitude as well as utility, those of any former age; and it will not, we believe, be without interest if we pass rapidly in review a few of the more remarkable difficulties with which the engineers of our day have found it necessary to grapple. nations in engineering, it was the last of the practical sciences to which they applied themselves. Down to the middle of last century, England had not produced a single engineer of note; and we depended for our engineering, even more than we did for our pictures and our music, upon foreigners. Great Britain had then indeed made small progress in material industry compared with continental nations. There was little demand for engineering works of any kind; and when any project of importance was set on foot, it was found necessary to call to our aid some distinguished Dutchman or Frenchman. Thus, the first engine set up in England for supplying houses with water through leaden pipes, was erected on the Thames at London Bridge, by Peter Morris, a Dutchman; and when the embankment of the Great Bedford Level was determined on, Cornelius Vermuyden, another Dutch engineer, was employed to conduct the works. The first extensive bridge erected in England, of superior scientific construction, was Westminster Bridge; and it was erected by M. Labelye, a French engineer. The only Englishman who had at all distinguished himself down to the middle of the century was one John Perry, who successfully stopped an alarming breach of the Thames in the Dagenham Embankment; but his abilities found so little scope at home that he emigrated to Russia, and entered into the service of Peter the Great, then engaged, with his army, in cutting a canal between the Neva and the Volga. Perry styled himself "Adventurer," which was the term then applied to those who undertook hazardous engineering enterprises; and the word is still in use amongst the Cornish miners. It is a remarkable proof of the practical ability of the English people, that the greatest engineering works of the last century have been designed and executed for the most part by self-educated men. Down to quite a recent date, there was no college or school for engineers in this country; and The first English engineer, properly so some of the most eminent practitioners had called, was James Brindley, the great canalnot even the benefit of ordinary day-school maker. Although canals had long been eminstruction. Brindley was first a day-laborer, ployed for commercial purposes in nearly afterwards a working millwright; Telford, a every country in Europe, no work of the working mason; John Rennie, a farmer's kind was commenced in England until 1755, son apprenticed to a millwright; George when the Sankeybrook Canal in Lancashire Stephenson, a brakesman and engineman. was authorized. This formed the beginning Probably no training would have made them of a new era. It was about this time that greater than they were. Endowed with the Duke of Bridgewater detected the genius abundant genius and perseverence, their of Brindley, and withdrew him from his ocbest education was habitual encounter with cupation of a millwright for the purpose of difficulties. constructing his celebrated canal from Wors It is also worthy of note, that although ley to Manchester. While Brindley was the English have latterly eclipsed all other thus employed upon his first canal, Smeaton |