hey chose Olney in
Buckinghamshire, on the Ouse. The Ouse was "a slow winding river,"
watering low meadows, from which crept pestilential fogs. Olney was a
dull town, or rather village, inhabited by a population of lace-makers,
ill-paid, fever-stricken, and for the most part as brutal as they were
poor. There was not a woman in the place excepting Mrs. Newton with
whom Mrs. Unwin could associate, or to whom she could look for help in
sickness or other need. The house in which the pair took up their
abode was dismal, prison-like, and tumble-down; when they left it, the
competitors for the succession were a cobbler and a publican. It
looked upon the Market Place, but it was in the close neighbourhood of
Silver End, the worst part of Olney. In winter the cellars were full
of water. There were no pleasant walks within easy reach, and in
winter Cowper's only exercise was pacing thirty yards of gravel, with
the dreary supplement of dumb-bells. What was the attraction to this
"well," this "abyss," as Cowper himself called it, and as, physically
and socially, it was?

The attraction was the presence of the Rev. John Newton, then curate of
Olney. The vicar was Moses Brown, an Evangelical and a religious
writer, who has even deserved a place among the worthies of the
revival; but a family of thirteen children, some of whom it appears too
closely resembled the sons of Eli, had compelled him to take advantage
of the indulgent character of the ecclesiastical polity of those days
by becoming a pluralist and a non-resident, so that the curate had
Olney to himself. The patron was the Lord Dartmouth, who, as Cowper
says, "wore a coronet and prayed." John Newton was one of the shining
lights and foremost leaders and preachers of the revival. His name was
great both in the Evangelical churches within the pale of the
Establishment, and in the Methodist churches without it. He was a
brand plucked from the very heart of the burning. We have a memoir of
his life, partly written by himself, in the form of letters, and
completed under his superintendence. It is a monument of the age of
Smollett and Wesley, not less characteristic than is Cellini's memoir
of the times in which he lived. His father was master of a vessel, and
took him to sea when he was eleven. His mother was a pious Dissenter,
who was at great pains to store his mind with religious thoughts and
pieces. She died when he was young, and his stepmother was not piou