As I came to Newport-Pagnel, a respectable elderly person drove by, in an open carriage, whom the whip pointed out to me as Mr. Bull; the son of Cowper’s old friend, whom he delighted to call his dear _Taurus_. Having a few minutes to spare in the place, and a proper introduction, I called at his house, and was glad to be shown a portrait of the venerable personage himself—the “smoke-inhaling Bull” of the Letters. A lady of the family politely gave me all needed directions, but assured me I should be greatly disappointed in Olney, where “there was nothing to see but old houses, and a general aspect of decay.” I said—‘Yes, but the house is there—and the summer-house—and the spire—and the bridge?’ I was answered that these were yet remaining, though somewhat the worse for wear and weather; and so, having succeeded in hiring a horse, off I went, alone. As I approached the neighbourhood of Olney, the first truly _Cowperish_ sight that struck me—and I had never seen such a sight before in my life—was a living illustration of his lines:— “Yon cottager that weaves at her own door, Pillow and bobbins, all her little store!” She little knew how much pleasure the sight of her gave to a passing stranger, with whom her art had been rendered poetically beautiful, by the charms of Cowper’s verse. This is, in fact, the secret of his spell as a poet, the power of investing even homely things, in real life, with a certain fascinating attractiveness. He avoids the romantic and the poetical, in choosing his themes; but he elevates what is common to a dignity and beauty unknown before. He is the most English of English bards, and I love him for teaching me to see a something even in the English poor, which makes them, to me, vastly more interesting than the romantic peasantry of Italy. True, the latter tread the vintage, and the other only stack the corn; but the English cottage has the Bible in it, and its children learn the Ten Commandments, and also learn that “cleanliness is next to godliness;” while in Italy, among fleas and other vermin, the idle parents sit lazily in the sun, and the children run after the traveller’s coach-wheel, lying while they beg, and showing by their religious vocabulary, that Bacchus and Maria are confounded in their imagination as saints of the same calendar.