such circumstances, his long continuance in life cannot be expected. How devoutly to be wished is the alleviation of his danger and distress! You, dear sir, who know so well the worth of our beloved and admired friend, sympathize with his affliction, and deprecate his loss doubtless in no ordinary degree; you have already most effectually expressed and proved the warmth of your friendship. I cannot think that any thing but your society would have been sufficient, during the infirmity under which his mind has long been oppressed, to have supported him against the shock of Mrs. Unwin's paralytic attack. I am certain that nothing else could have prevailed upon him to undertake the journey to Eartham. You have succeeded where his other friends knew they could not, and where they apprehended no one could. How natural therefore, nay, how reasonable, is it for them to look to you, as most likely to be instrumental, under the blessing of God, for relief in the present distressing and alarming crisis! It is indeed scarcely attemptable to ask any person to take such a journey, and involve himself in so melancholy a scene, with an uncertainty of the desired success; increased as the apparent difficulty is by dear Mr. Cowper's aversion to all company, and by poor Mrs. Unwin's mental and bodily infirmities. On these accounts Lady Hesketh dares not ask it of you, rejoiced as she would be at your arrival. Am not I, dear sir, a very presumptuous person, who, in the face of all opposition, dare do this? I am emboldened by those two powerful supporters, conscience and ex

perience. Was I at Eartham, I would certainly undertake the labour I presume to recommend. for the bare possibility of restoring Mr. Cowper to himself, to his friends, to the public, and to God.

Hayley, on the receipt of this letter, lost no time in repairing to Weston; but his unhappy friend was too much overwhelmed by his oppressive malady to show even the least glimmering of satisfaction at the appearance of a guest whom he used to receive with the most lively expressions of affectionate delight.

It is the nature of this tremendous melancholy, not only to enshroud and stifle the finest faculties of the mind, but it suspends, and apparently annihilates, for a time, the strongest and best-rooted affections of the heart.

Lady Hesketh, profiting by Hayley's presence, quitted her charge for a few days, that she might have a personal conference with Dr. Willis. A friendly letter from Lord Thurlow to that celebrated physician had requested his attention to the highly interesting sufferer. Dr. Willis prescribed for Cowper, and saw him at Weston, but not with that success and felicity, which made his medical skill on another most awful occasion the source of national delight and exultation.

Indeed, the extraordinary state of Cowper appeared to abound with circumstances very unfavourable to his mental relief. The daily sight of a being reduced to such deplorable imbecility as

now overwhelmed Mrs. Unwin, was in itself sufficient to plunge a tender spirit into extreme melancholy; yet to separate two friends, so long accustomed to minister, with the purest and most vigilant benevolence, to the infirmities of each other, was a measure so pregnant with complicated distraction, that it could not be advised or attempted. It remained only to palliate the sufferings of each in their present most pitiable condition, and to trust in the mercy of that God, who had supported them together through periods of very dark affliction, though not so doubly deplorable as the present.

Who can contemplate this distressing spectacle without recalling the following pathetic exclamation in the Sampson Agonistes of Milton ?

Since such as thou hast solemnly elected,
With gifts and graces eminently adorned;

Yet towards these thus dignified, thou oft
Amidst their height of noon,

Changest thy count nance, and thy hand, with no regard
Of highest favours past

From thee on them, or them to thee of service.

So deal not with this once thy glorious champion!
What do I beg? How hast thou dealt already!
Behold him in this state calamitous, and turn
His labours, for thou canst, to peaceful end!

It was on the 23rd of April, 1794, in one of those melancholy mornings, when his kind and af

fectionate relation Lady Hesketh and Hayley were watching together over this dejected sufferer, that a letter from Lord Spencer arrived at Weston, to announce the intended grant of a pension from his Majesty to Cowper, of 300l. per annum, rendered payable to his friend Mr. Rose, as the trustee of Cowper. This intelligence produced in the friends of the poet very lively emotions of delight, yet blended with pain almost as powerful; for it was painful, in no trifling degree, to reflect that these desirable smiles of good fortune could not impart even a faint glimmering of joy to the dejected poet.

From the time when Hayley left his unhappy friend at Weston, in the spring of the year 1794, he remained there under the tender vigilance of Lady Hesketh, till the latter end of July 1795:a long season of the darkest depression! in which the best medical advice and the influence of time appeared equally unable to lighten that afflictive burthen which pressed incessantly on his spirits.

It was under these circumstances that my revered brother-in-law, with a generous disinterestedness and affection that must ever endear him to the admirers of Cowper, determined, with Lady Hesketh's concurrence, to remove the poet and his afflicted companion into Norfolk. In adopting this plan he did not contemplate more than a year's absence from Weston. But what was intended to be only temporary, proved in the sequel to be a final removal.

Few events could have been more painful to Cowper than a separation from his beloved Weston.

Every object was familiar to his eye, and had long engaged the affections of his heart. Its beautiful scenery had been traced with all the minuteness of description, and the glow of poetic fancy. The slow-winding Ouse, " bashful yet impatient to be seen," was henceforth to glide "in its sinuous course" unperceived. The spacious meads, the lengthened colonnade, the proud alcove, and the sound of the sweet village-bells-these memorials of past happy days were to be seen and heard no more. All have felt the pang excited by the separation or loss of friends; but who has not also experienced that even trees have tongues, and that every object in nature knows how to plead its empire over the heart?

What Cowper's sensations were on this occasion, may be collected from the following little incident.

On the morning of his departure from Weston, he wrote the following lines in pencil on the back of the shutter, in his bed-room.

"Farewell, dear scenes, for ever closed to me!

Oh! for what sorrows must I now exchange you!"

These lines have been carefully preserved as the expressive memorial of his feelings on leaving Wes

ton.

Nor can the following little poem fail to excite interest, not only as being the last original production which he composed at Weston, but from its deep and unaffected pathos. It is addressed to Mrs. Unwin. No language can exhibit a specimen of verse more exquisitely tender.