with his
patients. Cowper, after his recovery, speaks of that intercourse with
the keenest pleasure and gratitude; so that in the opinion of the two
persons best qualified to judge, religion in this case was not the
bane. Cowper has given us a full account of his recovery. It was
brought about, as we can plainly see, by medical treatment wisely
applied; but it came in the form of a burst of religious faith and
hope. He rises one morning feeling better; grows cheerful over his
breakfast, takes up the Bible, which in his fits of madness he always
threw aside, and turns to a verse in the Epistle to the Romans.
"Immediately I received strength to believe, and the full beams of the
Sun of Righteousness shone upon me. I saw the sufficiency of the
atonement He had made, my pardon in His blood, and the fulness and
completeness of His justification. In a moment I believed and received
the Gospel." Cotton at first mistrusted the sudden change, but he was
at length satisfied, pronounced his patient cured, and discharged him
from the asylum, after a detention of eighteen months. Cowper hymned
his deliverance in _The Happy Change_, as in the hideous Sapphics he
had given religious utterance to his despair.

The soul, a dreary province once
Of Satan's dark domain,
Feels a new empire form'd within,
And owns a heavenly reign.

The glorious orb whose golden beams
The fruitful year control,
Since first obedient to Thy word,
He started from the goal,

Has cheer'd the nations with the joys
His orient rays impart;
But', Jesus, 'tis Thy light alone
Can shine upon the heart.

Once for all, the reader of Cowper's life must make up his mind to
acquiesce in religious forms of expression. If he does not sympathize
with them, he will recognize them as phenomena of opinion, and bear
them like a philosopher. He can easily translate them into the
language of psychology, or even of physiology, if he thinks fit.

CHAPTER II.

AT HUNTINGDON--THE UNWINS.

The storm was over; but it had swept away a great part of Cowper's
scanty fortune, and almost all his friends. At thirty-five he was
stranded and desolate. He was obliged to resign a Commissionership of
Bankruptcy which he held, and little seems to have remained to him but
the rent of his chambers in the Temple. A return to his profession
was, of course, out of the question. His relations, however, combined
to make up a little income for him, th