More than once have I betrayed, in the course of my narrative, a strong affection for the name and memory of Cowper. To his poetry and letters, I was introduced in early childhood, by the admiring terms in which a beloved parent often quoted and criticised them; and no subsequent familiarity with them has, in the least, impaired my relish for their peculiar charms. I regard him as the regenerator of English poetry, and as the morning-star of all that truly illustrates the nineteenth century. A gentle but powerful satirist of the evils of his own times, he was a noble agent in the hand of God, for removing them, and making way for a great restoration. Without dreaming of his mission, he was a prime mover in the great action which has thrown off the lethargy of Hanoverianism, and awakened the Church of England to world-wide enterprises of good; and though the injudicious counsels of good John Newton gave a turn to his piety, which may well be deplored in its consequences upon himself, it is ground for rejoicing that the influences of the Church upon his own good taste, were strong enough to rescue his contributions to literature from the degrading effects of religious enthusiasm. If any one will take the trouble to compare “the Task” with such a production as Pollok’s “Course of time,” he will be struck with the force of my remark, for there the same enthusiasm exhibits itself as developed by sectarianism. I was surprised to find how many places in England were fraught with recollections of this retired and sedentary poet. A distant view of St. Alban’s, the banks of the Ouse, the churchyard of St. Margaret’s, and the school-room, at Westminster, the gardens of the Temple, and the little village of St. Neot’s all recalled him to mind, in his various moods, of suffering and dejection. Even the ruins of Netley Abbey revived his memory, for there he seems to have been filled with novel emotions, as an unwonted tourist, with whom romantic scenes were far from familiar. The opposite pole of poetic association became electric in Cheapside, where so many John Gilpins still keep shop, if they do not “ride abroad.” But I frequently passed, on the railway, a village in Hertfordshire, which is invested with memories of a more elevated and affecting character. It was not only the birth-place of the poet, (as well as of Bishop Ken,) but its church-tower is that from which he heard the bell tolled on the burial-day of his mother. Its parsonage was the scene of all those maternal tendernesses, which he has so touchingly celebrated; and who that has shared the love of a Christian mother, can fail to reverence the bard, who has so inimitably enshrined, in poetry, the best and holiest instincts of the human heart, as exhibited in the mutual loves of the mother and her son? I could not leave England without first paying a pilgrimage to those scenes of his maturer life, which have become classic from their frequent mention in his poems.