from the upper windows of his house across the river, and beyond the high ground of Filgrave to the Brickhills, and even down the valley of the Ousel to the distant Chilterns, a smiling but almost mountainous prospect; for it is one of Ouse's tricks to veil his gentle slopes in such a gauzy haze as gives the effect of steep hills and mighty distances. Behind Weston is Yardley Chase, with the great oaks that Cowper worshipped. The tree to which he addressed an unfinished poem is pollarded; the real monarchs of the forest are two, a little further from Weston, which he used often to visit, and sometimes known as Gog and Magog. One of them, however, is also known as Judith, and there is a tradition that it was planted by, or in honor of, the Countess Judith, half-sister of William the Conqueror, to whom the greater part of the surrounding country was given by her brother. The trees are certainly of very great antiquity, and the fact that they alone, among the ancient oaks of the forest, have been left unpollarded, indicates some special association.

The last years of the poet's life at Weston are painful to think of. Mrs. Unwin was breaking down, and Cowper, from having been patient, had become nurse; insanity gained upon him, and took a new form, which was aggravated by the foolish ministrations of a foolish schoolmaster at Olney. Still, there were lucid intervals, and not unfrequent flashes of the old bright wit. In 1795 his cousin Johnson removed the invalids to Norfolk. Mrs. Unwin died the following year, and at the end of April, 1800, Cowper's tortured clay found rest.

A century has passed since Cowper rambled by the Ouse-a century of unparalleled movement in all that advances the material resources of mankind-and yet how little we are changed! The Frenchman still hates

an Englishman as he did when "The Task" was written; England is again at war in one of her colonies; the Evangelical movement has done its work, and quieted down; but is Cowper's call to greater earnestness any less necessary to-day than it was a hundred years ago? Amusement still takes the first place in the thoughts of the many; the drunkard still staggers in our streets; behind the noble frontages of our expanded towns there is still the squalid heap of derelict humanity. Cowper does not bid us to be gloomy; his call is not to asceticism, but to a recognition that there is something more to be lived for than the satisfaction of our own desires. Particular forms of recreation were needlessly offensive to the society with which he lived. We smile when we find him dealing no less severely with a clergyman who played the violin after service on Sundays, than with his sporting neighbor. His detestation of cardplaying appears to us out of proportion; but then we have forgotten what cardplaying meant in those days-what an endless waste of time, of health, of money. Whenever we are disposed to be annoyed with Cowper's disproportionate censures we must recall the circumstances in which he lived, the dependence upon others imposed by his malady, and the not altogether happy fate which determined those who should control his destinies at a critical period of his life. Surely there must, after all, have been an enormous vitality in the man to write as much as he did, and as well as he did, placed as he was.

Of all our teachers Cowper is the most sincere; he lived as he preached, brightening the common things of life with humor, sanctifying them with love; and this is why the gentle Ouse has its votaries. It is impossible to dissociate his water-lilies and his reeds, his poplars and his willows, his broad

meadows and wooded slopes, from the memory of the man of whom it was said: "If there is a good man living, it is William Cowper."

The country has but little changed in the course of a century. The ruins of Capability Brown's exploits are still traceable at Weston; the square tower of Clifton still looks down upon the spire of Olney; there is still a clump of poplars at Lavendon Mill; there is still a wealth of flowering rushes with their cherry-scented blossoms, of broadleaved plants varying the monotony of the reeds, of purple loose-strife, of blue forget-me-not. An adventurous holiday-maker who could, for a couple of days, forego the delights of dusty roads and the rushing wheel might find a less agreeable pastime than a voyage in a canoe from Newport Pagnell down to Turvey. Thus he might bathe himself Macmillan's Magazine.

in the atmosphere which was breathed by no mean English poet, gliding beneath hills clothed with trees, or between wide meadows; but he would do well not to surrender himself unguardedly to the calm pleasure of plain sailing, lest he should rue his error lost in the mazes of a reed-bed. Failing this adventure his events will be the scream and flash of a kingfisher, or the sulky croak of a heron disturbed in his meal of freshwater mussels.

From Turvey to Bedford the journey is well enough for a while, but he must, indeed, be fond of water-ways who does not weary of those seven-fold wanderings of the river below Sharnbrook; and yet these also are sacred to the memory of a poet. It was here that Edward Fitzgerald used to dream and fish. Omar Khayyam and Cowper meet upon the Ouse.

J. C. Tarver.

A new curate was coming to the parish church, and there was a flutter of interest, not, it is to be feared, exclusively spiritual.

The marriage-garden of Kirkholm relied for a good deal of its husbandry upon young clergymen and young doctors, and perhaps the solid influence of Archdeacon Whittaker owed more than he knew to the eligibility of his curates. For many years past he had given no title to a candidate without sufficient social claims, and the fallingin of little livings kept happy time with the engagements of his staff. Only one of the parish clergy had married out of the congregation-and he was, exemplarily, a curate still. Consequently people spoke with more than titular respect of "our Venerable Archdeacon," and little oddities as a preacher-such as a tendency to lose his place and to give the same sermon on two successive Sundays-were treated with smiling toleration.

"Preaching, indeed!" said Mrs. Whitworth, whose daughter Lilian was very nearly engaged to one of the four curates; "it is practice that tells. Look at that Pollock person!" (Mr. Pollock was the vicar of St. Ann's). "You'd think from his sermons the man was really in earnest, and yet when he comes down from the pulpit how does he behave? 'Bear one another's burdens,' indeed-and three married curates running!"

"But he is a very hard worker," Lilian remarked. "He has done a great deal among the poor."

"Oh, no doubt, no doubt," answered her mother; "we hear far too much about the slums. The lower classes are very well off. It's we that are the poor. I don't pity your mill-hands at all-who minds what class they travel? It's the

comfortably off that must go somewhere for a holiday, and wear decent gloves and have hot joints for dinner, that I am sorry for. The poor! Rubbish!"

"He is coming on Friday," said Dora, the youngest daughter, when this irrelevance showed symptoms of subsiding, "and he preaches at the iron church on Sunday evening.

"Then I hope," said Mrs. Whitworth,. "they will have the seats cleaned. I really don't know what they want with a chapel of ease at that dirty end of the town. Ease, indeed! Ease ought to begin with an f and another letter. We must ask him to supper, poor, lonely young man."

"Mr. How should be told to bring him," said Dora. "Had not you better write, Lil?"

"Nonsense," said Lilian; "why should: I write?" Mr. How was her particular curate.

Sunday came and there was a large congregation at the chapel of ease. Mrs. Whitworth, after a hasty conference with the verger and a little flapping of his gown, sat down in a front seat, supported by Mrs. Bagwell and Miss Amy Finch. The two Whitworth girls had: declined to be thrust into such extreme prominence. A modesty ill-requited: by Mrs. Sedgwick, for she beckoned up her own young ladies, after the service had begun, knowing that Emma looked almost pretty when she blushed. There was a little coolness between the heads of the Whitworth and Sedgwick household, consequent upon that, but happily it did not involve the girls, who respected one another's love of fair play.. "I am so sorry, Dora," Julia Sedgwick said, when the service was over, and the young people were walking home in a cluster. "Mother meant kindly,.

of

course, but I hope you don't believe"

"Of course not," said Dora. "Well, what do you think of him?"

"Oh, when he falls over his surplice rather less, and can find his way a little in the prayers and does not drop his voice so much, and gives out some of the right hymns, we shall be able to judge better."

"He's nothing to Mr. Richardson," Lilian said. "Don't you remember we heard him muttering to himself 'Oh, dear me, dear me!' and he ran his poor hair up into positive spikes. This one -Mr. Danby-was not so bad as that."

I

"But how unlucky that he could not discover how to get into the pulpit. really thought he would have to climb up, hand over-Oh!"

There was a voice in Julia's ear. "I beg your pardon," it said. "I believe I -er-"

All the girls turned round and there was the new curate bowing and smiling.

"How has been called to a sick case," he said; "may I introduce myself?"

. He shook hands all round with the disconcerted girls. Then he turned to Julia.

"There ought to be a finger-post," he said, "glancing towards the pulpit." "Oh, pray forgive me," said Julia, "but of course-"

"Why, what is there to forgive? You were very kind, I am sure."

"On the whole we really were complimentary."

"Oh, were you?-I think that must have been before I came up. Your kindness seemed to me of the castigating kind."

"Oh, that is ungrateful. said you did not-"

Why, we

"I can claim no credit for that. My hair won't go into spikes."

At the corner the Sedgwicks said good-bye, and the Whitworths carried home their prize.

By comparison he really was rather a prize. At any rate, he was not a blank. His manners were perfectly easy, and his conversational powers above the modest Kirkholm average. The only thing that went at all against the grain of approval was his silence concerning his family. Little halfquerries elicited no information, and to direct interrogation even Mrs. Whitworth

would not at once proceed. There was time enough for that. Prima facie a gentleman, with an Oxford degree, and a name pleasantly suggestive of noble connections-the young man deserved every encouragement.

"Now come often," said Mrs. Whitworth, when he rose to say good-bye. "Come whenever you feel inclinedwhenever you feel lonely. You are

sure to find some of us in, and there's always enough for supper."

"How could you say that, mother?" Lilian asked, when the young man had gone. "Bread and cheese, and the cold ends of pudding."

"There are tins in the cupboard," said Mrs. Whitworth, loftily. "Besides, he'll have the sense to go in time. I hope there is nothing wrong about his connections."

"Why, if it comes to that," said Dora, "look at Uncle Joe."

"No, Dora," answered her mother. "I will not look at Uncle Joe. I prefer to look at Aunt Basset and Cousin Catherine. Your Cousin Catherine might have been Lady Mudge."

At the sound of that dreaded name the girls took their candles. Mrs. Whitworth mounted upon the possible Lady Mudge was too high for anything.

"I like him, Lil," said Dora when the girls were in their own room.

"Strange," Lilian answered, "when he showed such a marked antipathy to you."

Young Mr. Danby was soon in a fair way to become notable among the Archdeacon's successes. Having at

length overcome those initial difficulties enumerated by Miss Sedgewick, he won much favor in the pulpit. It was a long time since the parish church had been blessed with an extempore preacher. Though a few people complained that Mr. Danby's arguments had a tendency to fade imperceptibly away, and that, while some of his sentences terminated with singular abruptness, others did not terminate at all, the mass of the congregation congratulated itself on having got one of the right sort. It was felt that while he wanted to say something and couldn't, the average curate wanted to say nothing and could. "Ay," chuckled the old illiterates, "but it's nice to hear a bit of talk." That was, indeed, a fair description of the young man's pulpit style. It was pervaded by an earnest familiarity. It had no eloquence, no brilliancy, no distinction. It lacked the ozone of intellectuality, the delicate airs of suggestion. It touched a few problems, and it yielded many stories. It left the imagination unfed, but it button-holed the conscience. "He gives it you," remarked a toper, who had come to hear him, "as straight as the missus on Saturday night." In a little while it became evident that the people looked out for the new curate's turn. The church was always full when it was known that he was going to preach.

It cannot be pretended that this popularity excited no bitterness in the clerical bosom. The senior curate reluctantly admitted his disgust. "Hitherto," he said, "the parish church has not been sensational. We have left that sort of thing to St. Ann's and the Bethels; I wonder the dear Archdeacon stands it."

"Come!" said How; "Danby is a really good fellow. He is thoroughly in earnest."

"Oh yes," answered the senior, lifting a refined hand and pushing vulgarity gently away, "your bull of Bashan al

ways is, but a man can be in earnest without letting himself down. I'd rather see the church empty than tell anecdotes about little boys being run over and saved by Bibles in their breast-pockets, and soldiers converted by screws of tobacco done up in leaves of 'Songs and Solos.'"

"It's a matter of taste," said How. "Yes, and I can't get the taste out of my mouth. He makes the better sort horribly uncomfortable."

"But we make them a great deal too comfortable. I, for example, as is only too evident, am a powerful soporific."

"Better send them to sleep with sound dogma than make them blubber with Moody's stories. I wish Danby welland well out of the parish church."

And something of that sort really did eventuate.

Danby was told off more and more for chapel-of-ease duty, until his work amounted to a sole charge of Back End. Back End might have smelt no sweeter under a rosier name, but it certainly fell short of fragrance under its own. It was not until he had entered into the husbandry of that neglected vineyard that the young man's quality came out. He threw himself heart and soul into the work. The little chapel was crowded to the doors. His best sermons were preached out of church. In a little while there was not a child whose name and character he did not know, nor a man for whose wages he could not account. He invaded publichouses at the cost (not entirely to himself) of beautiful black eyes. He instituted or vitalized clothing clubs, night schools, mothers' meetings, cottage lectures, a crèche, a boys' brigade, a cricket club, a gymnasium, a library. He walked arm in arm with oily men, not in condescension, but in natural goodfellowship. His pockets bulged with half-pounds of tea. And when the present was made he asked to have a cup with the happy old lady, and he