neighbourhood last summer, I felt that Cowper's house in the market-place, the Lodge at Weston Underwood, and the pencilled lines on the shutter of that room the poet left, with such melancholy forebodings of an eternal farewell, were all familiar to me, by means of Mr. Wright's graphic pen. I should wish also to express my gratitude to Mr. and Mrs. Langley, who received me very kindly at the Vicarage, and allowed me to ascend to John Newton's study, and look from the windows upon the garden where it was easy to imagine the poet's figure crossing the turf to receive a cheery welcome from the Vicar, with whom he had daily intercourse for so many years. Yes; the quiet of the old-world country town of past days came back with strange vividness, having also a sadness in it which seemed to tell how soon the vanishing would vanish; how soon the life of man on earth passes like a shadow on the hillside. Our homeward way lay along lanes where the wild roses bloomed in lavish profusion, and we passed through the village of Turvey, where Legh Richmond lived and loved and laboured, and lies buried in that fine old church, where he ministered so faithfully for twenty years. As the twilight deepened, the glowworms shone out in the hedges as the stars shone in the deep blue sky of the summer's night, and these words seemed to sound in my ear: "With each new spring New-born it wakes, when every forest thing It speaks, that voice of immemorial woe. Yes; we all must go. But there is no life that does not leave its mark behind. Every place in the world has a history to tell; has, wrapt perhaps in impenetrable silence, stories of love and sorrow, of self-sacrifice, of earnestness of purpose, of zeal for good, which will never be unfolded before us here. But in some rarer instances the story of a life is written in characters which can never be effaced, and such lives were those of William Cowper and his friend John Newton, the Vicar of Olney. WOODSIDE, Leighwoods, Clifton. October, 1887. |