One not unnatural result or accompaniment of such a life was that Cowper fell in love. There were in those days two young ladies, cousins of Cowper, residents in London, to one of whom, the Lady Hesketh of after years, he once wrote:—‘My dear Cousin,—I wonder how it happened, that much as I love you, I was never in love with you.’ No similar providence protected his intimacy with her sister. Theodora Cowper, ‘One of the cousins with whom Thurlow used to giggle and make giggle in Southampton-row,’ was a handsome and vigorous damsel. ‘What!’ said her father, ‘What will you do if you marry William Cowper?’ meaning, in the true parental spirit, to intrude mere pecuniary ideas. ‘Do, sir!’ she replied, ‘Wash all day, and ride out on the great dog all night!’ a spirited combination of domestic industry and exterior excitement. It is doubtful, however, whether either of these species of pastime and occupation would have been exactly congenial to Cowper. A gentle and refined indolence must have made him an inferior washerman, and perhaps to accompany the canine excursions of a wife ‘which clear-starched,’ would have hardly seemed enough to satisfy his accomplished and placid ambition. At any rate, it certainly does seem that he was not a very vigorous lover. The young lady was, as he himself oddly said:— ‘Through tedious years of doubt and pain, Fixed in her choice and faithful ... _but in vain_.’ The poet does indeed partly allude to the parental scruples of Mr. Cowper, her father; but house-rent would not be so high as it is, if fathers had their way. The profits of builders are eminently dependent on the uncontrollable nature of the best affections; and that intelligent class of men have had a table compiled from trustworthy data, in which the chances of parental victory are rated at ·0000000001, and those of the young people themselves at ·999999999,—in fact, as many nines as you can imagine. ‘It has been represented to me,’ says the actuary, ‘that few young people ever marry without some objection, more or less slight, on the part of their parents; and from a most laborious calculation, from data collected in quarters both within and exterior to the bills of mortality, I am led to believe that the above figures represent the state of the case accurately enough to form a safe guide for the pecuniary investments of the gentlemen, &c. &c.’ It is not likely that Theodora Cowper understood decimals, but she had a strong opinion in favour of her cousin, and a great idea, if we rightly read the now obscure annals of old times, that her father’s objections might pretty easily have been got over. In fact, we think so even now, without any prejudice of affection, in our cool and mature judgment. Mr. Cowper the aged had nothing to say, except that the parties were cousins—a valuable remark, which has been frequently repeated in similar cases, but which has not been found to prevent a mass of matches both then and since. Probably