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was pursuing my meditations, Mr. Unwin and family quite out of sight, my attention was suddenly called home again by the words which had been continually playing in my mind, and were, at length, repeated with such importunity that I could not help regarding them,- The Lord God of truth will do this.' I was effectually convinced that they were not of my own production, and accordingly I received from them some assurance of success; but my unbelief and fearfulness robbed me of much of the comfort they were intended to convey; though I have since had many a blessed experience of the same kind, for which I can never be sufficiently thankful. I immediately began to negotiate the affair, and in a few days it was entirely concluded."

Economy was one urgent motive for this change, which in other respects also was so consonant with his inclinations. "I find it impossible," he says to Hill, "to proceed any longer in my present course without danger of bankruptcy. I have therefore entered into an agreement with the Rev. Mr. Unwin to lodge and board with him. The family are the most agreeable in the world. They live in a special good house, and in a very genteel way. They are all exactly what I could wish them to be, and I know I shall be as happy with them as I can be on this side of the sun. I did not dream of the matter till about five days ago; but now the whole is settled. I shall transfer myself thither as soon as I have satisfied all demands upon me here."

On Nov. 11, 1765, Cowper took possession of his new abode, and became an inmate of Mr. Unwin's family. "I here found a place of rest," he says, "prepared for me by God's own hand, where he has given me abundant means of furtherance in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus, both by the study of his word, and communion with his dear disciples. May nothing but death interrupt it! Peace be with the reader, through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen." With these words he concludes the account of his own life and sufferings, which he drew up at Huntingdon, for the satisfaction of these new friends.

But Cowper had not yet learned to proportion his ways to his means. In the same communication that announced his intended removal, and acknowledged the danger of outrun32 Nov. 5, 1765.

ning his income, which rendered it necessary, he tells his friend,

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"I wrote to you about ten days ago,

Soliciting a quick return of gold,

To purchase certain horse that liked me well,"

I am become a professed horseman," he says in a former letter, "and do hereby assume to myself the style and title of the Knight of the Bloody Spur. It has cost me much to bring this point to bear; but I think I have at last accomplished it 33"

When he first learnt from Lady Hesketh how kindly his relations were disposed to act towards him, he was much affected by this proof of their regard. "If they really interest themselves," said he, "in my welfare, it is a mark of their great charity for one who has been a disappointment and a vexation to them ever since he has been of consequence to be either. My friend the major's behaviour to me, after all he suffered by my abandoning his interest and my own in so miserable a manner, is a noble instance of generosity and true greatness of mind; and, indeed, I know no man in whom those qualities are more conspicuous. One need only furnish him with an opportunity to display them, and they are always ready to show themselves in his words and actions, and even in his countenance, at a moment's warning. I have great reason to be thankful I have lost none of my acquaintance, but those whom I determined not to keep. I am sorry this class is so numerous 34"

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He had not long been domesticated with the Unwins, when he received a letter from his uncle Ashley, "giving him to understand in the gentlest terms, and in such as he was sure to choose, that the family were not a little displeased at having learnt that he kept a servant; and that he maintained a boy also, whom he had brought with him from St. Albans.' or three letters were exchanged between them on this subject, and Cowper did not alter his plan, though his uncle told him as softly as he could, there was danger lest the offence taken by his relations should operate to the prejudice of his income. Shortly after this correspondence had ceased, "my brother," says Cowper, "went to town, where his stay was short, and, 33 Aug. 14, 1765. 34 To Lady Hesketh, Aug. 1, 1765.

when I saw him next, gave me the following intelligence: that my cousin (the colonel) had been the mover of this storm; that finding me inflexible, he had convened the family on the occasion, had recommended it to them not to give to one who knew so little how to make a right use of their bounty, and declared that for his own part he would not, and that he had accordingly withdrawn his contribution. My brother added, however, that my good friend Sir Thomas (Hesketh) had stepped into his place, and made good the deficiency 35.3

The colonel's contribution, however, was not withdrawn 36 his object seems to have been to make his kinsman feel the propriety of observing a due economy under his peculiar circumstances, and the injustice of doing generous acts at the expense of others. On this occasion Cowper received two affecting proofs of sincere friendship. The first may best be related in his own words to Lady Hesketh: "I have a word or two more to say on the same subject. While this troublesome matter was in agitation, and I expected little less than to be abandoned by the family, I received an anonymous letter, in a hand entirely strange to me, by the post. It was conceived in the kindest and most benevolent terms imaginable, exhorting me not to distress myself with fears lest the threatened event should take place; for that, whatever deduction of my income might happen, the defect should be supplied by a person who loved me tenderly and approved my conduct. I wish I knew who dictated this letter. I have seen, not long since, a style most excessively like it." Evidently he supposed it to have come from Lady Hesketh herself; and from her,.. or her sister Theodora,. . no doubt it came.

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35 To Lady Hesketh, Jan. 2, 1786. Being thus informed," says Cowper to Lady Hesketh in this letter, " or as it seems now misinformed, you will not wonder, my dear, that I no longer regarded the colonel as my friend, or that I have not inquired after him from that day to the present. But when speaking of him you express yourself thus, who you know has been so constantly your friend! I feel myself more than reconciled to him; I feel a sincere affection for him, convinced that he could not have acted toward me, as my brother had heard, without your knowledge of it."

John Cowper could not have been misinformed, as his brother chose to believe. The fact appears to have been as stated in the text. The colonel threatened seriously,-but did not choose to be outdone in generosity towards a kinsman whom he loved; and was probably satisfied when he saw how much the next year's expenses were reduced.

The other proof of true friendship was given by Mrs. Unwin: " Though I had not," he says, "been ten months in the family, Mrs. Unwin generously offered me my place under her roof, with all the same accommodation, (and undertook to manage that matter with her husband,) at half the stipulated payment."

After his removal from lodgings a pause of some months ensued in his correspondence with Lady Hesketh. When she had renewed it, he wrote thus to her :

MY DEAR COUSIN,

Huntingdon, March 6, 1766.

I have for some time past imputed your silence to the cause which you yourself assign for it, viz. to my change of situation; and was even sagacious enough to account for the frequency of your letters to me while I lived alone, from your attention to me in a state of such solitude, as seemed to make it an act of particular charity to write to me. I bless God for it, I was happy even then; solitude has nothing gloomy in it if the soul points upwards. St. Paul tells his Hebrew converts, "Ye are come (already come) to Mount Sion, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly of the first born, which are written in heaven, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant." When this is the case, as surely it was with them, or the Spirit of Truth had never spoken it, there is an end of the melancholy and dulness of life at once. You will not suspect me, my dear cousin, of a design to understand this passage literally. But this, however, it certainly means; that a lively faith is able to anticipate, in some measure, the joys of that heavenly society which the soul shall actually possess hereafter.

Since I have changed my situation, I have found still greater cause of thanksgiving to the Father of all mercies. The family with whom I live are Christians; and it has pleased the Almighty to bring me to the knowledge of them, that I may want no means of improvement in that temper and conduct which he is pleased to require in all his servants.

My dear cousin! one half of the Christian world would call this madness, fanaticism, and folly: but are not these things warranted by the word of God, not only in the passages I have cited, but in many others? If we have no communion with God here, surely we can expect none hereafter. A faith

that does not place our conversation in heaven; that does not warm the heart and purify it too; that does not, in short, govern our thought, word, and deed, is no faith, nor will it obtain for us any spiritual blessing here, or hereafter. Let us see, therefore, my dear cousin, that we do not deceive ourselves in a matter of such infinite moment. The world will be ever telling us, that we are good enough; and the world will vilify us behind our backs. But it is not the world which tries the heart; that is the prerogative of God alone. My dear cousin! I have often prayed for you behind your back, and now I pray for you to your face. There are many who would not forgive me this wrong; but I have known you so long, and so well, that I am not afraid of telling you how sincerely I wish for your growth in every Christian grace, in every thing that may promote and secure your everlasting welfare.

I am obliged to Mrs. Cowper for the book, which, you perceive, arrived safe. I am willing to consider it as an intimation on her part, that she would wish me to write to her, and shall do it accordingly. My circumstances are rather particular, such as call upon my friends, those I mean who are truly such, to take some little notice of me; and will naturally make those, who are not such in sincerity, rather shy of doing it. To this I impute the silence of many with regard to me, who, before the affliction that befell me, were ready enough to converse with me, Yours, ever, W. C.

He was probably right in accounting for the former frequency of her letters, as well as for their latter cessation. Lady Hesketh had a sisterly love for him, but he addressed her in a strain to which no one who did not entirely sympathise in his religious views could have any satisfaction in replying. That sympathy he found in Mrs. Cowper, wife of the colonel, who was first cousin both to him and her husband, and sister to Martin Madan, at that time chaplain to the Lock Hospital, and one of the most distinguished of those clergy who in their style of preaching approached the then rising body of the Methodists, in proportion as they departed from the standard of the church. Cowper, when his malady was at the height, had sent for this kinsman, whom he used to think an enthusiast; he fancied that if there were any balm in Gilead he must be the physician to administer it. Mrs.

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