die before you can see him. On the right hand
stands a cupboard, the work of the same author, it was once a
dove-cage, but I transformed it. Opposite to you stands a table, which
I also made; but a merciless servant having scrubbed it until it became
paralytic, it serves no purpose now but of ornament; and all my clean
shoes stand under it. On the left hand, at the further end of this
superb vestibule, you will find the door of the parlour, into which I
will conduct you, and where I will introduce you to Mrs. Unwin, unless
we should meet her before, and where we will be as happy as the day is
long. Order yourself, my cousin, to the Swan at Newport, and there you
shall find me ready to conduct you to Olney.

"My dear, I have told Homer what you say about casks and urns, and have
asked him whether he is sure that it is a cask in which Jupiter keeps
his wine. He swears that it is a cask, and that it will never be
anything better than a cask to eternity. So if the god is content with
it, we must even wonder at his taste, and be so too.

"Adieu! my dearest, dearest cousin.
W. C."

Here, by way of contrast, is a letter written in the lowest spirits
possible to Mr. Newton. It displays literary grace inalienable even in
the depths of hypochondria. It also shows plainly the connexion of
hypochondria with the weather. January was a month to the return of
which the sufferer always looked forward with dread as a mysterious
season of evil. It was a season, especially at Olney, of thick fog
combined with bitter frosts. To Cowper this state of the atmosphere
appeared the emblem of his mental state; we see in it the cause. At
the close the letter slides from spiritual despair to the
worsted-merchant, showing that, as we remarked before, the language of
despondency had become habitual, and does not always flow from a soul
really in the depths of woe.

TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.

"_Jan. 13th_, 1784.

"MY DEAR FRIEND,--I too have taken leave of the old year, and parted
with it just when you did, but with very different sentiments and
feelings upon the occasion. I looked back upon all the passages and
occurrences of it, as a traveller looks back upon a wilderness through
which he has passed with weariness, and sorrow of heart, reaping no
other fruit, of his labour, than the poor consolation that, dreary as
the desert was, he has left it all behind him. The traveller would
find even this comfort considerab