me the way, and a wheezing old man--half gardener and half
butler--introduced me to the rooms where Cowper had passed so many a
dreary hour, and where he had been cheered by the blithe company of
Cousin Lady Hesketh.

My usher remembered the crazy recluse, and, when we had descended to the
garden, told me how much he, with other village-boys, stood in awe of
him,--and how the poet used to walk up and down the garden-alleys in
dressing-gown and white-tasselled cotton cap, muttering to himself; but
what mutterings some of them were!

"Thy silver locks, once auburn bright,
Are still more lovely in my sight
Than golden beams of orient light,
My Mary!

"For could I view nor them nor thee,
What sight worth seeing could I see?
The sun would rise in vain for me,
My Mary!

"Partakers of thy sad decline,
Thy hands their little force resign,
Yet, gently pressed, press gently mine,
My Mary!"

Afterward the shuffling old usher turns a key in a green gate, and shows
me into the "Wilderness." Here I come presently upon the Temple,--sadly
shattered,--and upon the urns with their mouldy inscriptions; I wander
through the stately avenue of lindens to the Alcove, and, so true are
the poet's descriptions, I recognize at once the seat of the
Throckmortons, the "Peasant's Nest," the "Rustic Bridge," and far away a
glimpse of the spire of Olney.

Plainly as I see to-day the farm-flat of Edgewood smoking under the
spring rains below me, I see again the fat meadows that lie along the
sluggish Ouse reeking with the heats of July. And I bethink me of the
bewildered, sensitive poet, shrinking from the world, loving Nature so
dearly, loving friends like a child, loving God with reverence, and yet
with a great fear that is quickened by the harsh hammering of John
Newton's iron Calvinism into a wild turbulence of terror. From this he
seeks escape in the walks of the "Wilderness," and paces moodily up and
down from temple to alcove,--in every shady recess still haunted by "a
fearful looking-for of judgment," and from every sunny bit of turf
clutching fancies by eager handful, to strew over his sweet poem of the
"Task."

A sweet poem, I repeat, though not a finished or a grand one; but there
is in it such zealous, earnest overflow of country-love that we farmers
must needs welcome it with open hearts.

I should not l