How exact, faithful, and literally true in his record of the appearances of Nature Cowper is, we have seen. It remains to ask whether he had any philosophy of Nature, and if so, what it was. It could not be that one so devout could look habitually on the face of Nature without asking himself how all this visible vastness stands related to the Invisible One whom his heart held commune with. All remember his well-known line,— “God made the country, but man made the town,” and this thought echoes through all his praises of the country, and enhances his pleasure in it. But it is not only by incidental allusion that Cowper lets us know his thoughts on these things. The “Task” contains two long passages, one in the “Winter Morning Walk,” from line 733 to 906, and another in “The Winter Walk at Noon,” from line 181 to 254, in which his feelings on this subject find full utterance, opening with the noble words,— “He is the freeman whom the Truth makes free, And all are slaves beside.” In the former passage, of the man whose heart is set free with this heavenly freedom he says, in words well known, “He looks abroad into the varied field Of Nature, and ... Calls the delightful scenery all his own. His are the mountains, and the valleys his, And the resplendent rivers. His to enjoy With a propriety that none can feel, But who, with filial confidence inspired, Can lift to Heaven an unpresumptuous eye, And smiling say, ‘My Father made them all.’” And so throughout this whole passage he continues in a strain akin to that of Thomson’s Hymn, but more intimate and devout, his acknowledgment of Him whom he calls “The only just Proprietor” of Nature. It is He who alike “Gives its lustre to an insect’s wing, And wheels his throne upon the rolling worlds.” When He has enlightened the eye and touched the mortal ear— “In that blest moment, Nature throwing wide Her veil opaque, discloses with a smile The Author of her beauties, who, retired Behind his own creation, works unseen By the impure, and hears his word denied. ... “But, O thou bounteous Giver of all good, Thou art of all thy gifts thyself the crown! Give what thou canst, without thee we are poor, And with thee rich, take what thou wilt away.” A finer strain of rapturous piety could not be, but yet in it all there is no advance beyond the old conception of a dead mechanical world, which God, himself removed aloof, moves entirely from without. There is no hint that Nature is alive with a life received from God himself, and mysteriously connected with Him. But in the second passage alluded to his thought about Nature takes a higher reach. Speaking of the revival of the earth under the touch of spring, he teaches that “There lives and moves A soul in all things, and that soul is God.”