giggled at its drolleries, was William Wilson the barber. "The story of John Gilpin,'" observes Hazlitt, "has perhaps given. as much pleasure to as many people as anything of the same length that ever was written." The ballad was first printed in November 1782, in the Public Advertiser, and it not only did the hearts good of its numerous readers, it acted in a similar manner upon the poet himself, for in this same month of November we read of his growing plump, and the ladies told him that he was looking as young as ever. In July 1783, at the instance of Lady Austen, who playfully suggested the Sofa as a suitable subject to write upon, and to please whom it was written in blank verse, Cowper commenced his magnum opus, “The Task;" but long before its publication another rupture had taken place between them. The reason is not clearly known, but it is probable that, finding Lady Austen's attachment to him growing more serious than he had ever intended-for since his dreadful derangement at the Vicarage he had given up all thoughts of marriage (it should be remembered too that he was in his fifty-fourth year)— and seeing himself called on to renounce either one lady or the other, he felt it to be his bounden duty to cling to Mrs. Unwin, to whose kindness he had been indebted for so many years. The short poem (twelve lines) written by Cowper which Lady Austen interpreted too literally, and which she afterwards showed to Hayley, was printed for the first time in 1870 in the Globe edition of Cowper. It is entitled, “To a lady who wore a lock of his hair set with diamonds," and contains the lines "The heart that beats beneath that breast Is William's, well I know; A nobler prize and richer far Than India could bestow." Hayley, who was not permitted to print the verses, makes the remark—"Those who were acquainted with the unsuspecting innocence and sportive gaiety of Cowper would readily allow, if they had seen the verses to which I allude, that they are such as he might have addressed to a real sister; but a lady only called by that endearing name may be easily pardoned if she was induced by them to hope that they might possibly be a prelude to a still dearer alliance. To me they appeared expressive of that peculiarity in his character, a gay and tender gallantry perfectly distinct from amorous attachment." When matters could go on no longer as they were, "Cowper," says Hayley," wrote a very tender yet resolute letter, in which he explained and lamented the circumstances that forced him to renounce her society." She in anger burnt the letter, and ere long left Olney. The threefold cord was broken! But "all's well that ends well:" Lady Austen married, soon after, M. de Tardiff, an accomplished Frenchman, who was passionately attached to her, and appears to have spent the remainder of her life very happily (she died in Paris in 1802); whilst the poet and Mrs. Unwin became greater friends than ever, and the former, setting more earnestly about his literary work, occupied himself in finishing the great poem that owed its origin to Lady Austen's suggestion. XI. "KILWICK'S ECHOING WOOD." "There is a field, through which I often pass, -COWPER: The Needless Alarm. How welcome and exhilarating is the first bright day that follows the cold, mist, wind, and rain of the dull months of February and March! Spring came in with a bound last year, and a single flood of sunshine put the whole country-side into good-humour; it coaxed the budded sprigs of alehoof till they purpled every bank, it poured new vigour into the veins of Jack-by-the-hedge till he and his companions rose as if by magic in serried and stately ranks, it shed its genial and irresistible influence over field and lane till sloe blossom whitened the hedges, and every bush and tree, lately so bare, were burgeoning in tender green. In so goodly a garment, indeed, was the earth arrayed that this first bright April day seemed to more than compensate for all the dull months that preceded it; and we at once made up our minds to take advantage of the fine weather, and attempt a walk to "Kilwick's echoing wood," and the venerable hollow tree that is now called "Cowper's Oak." The way we took, the pleasantest and most direct one, is the path that gradually rises from the close called the Pightle, through several enclosures on the west side of Olney, and is parallel to the road leading from Olney to Weston, the highest portion being that called by Cowper in his letters "the Cliff." "One morning last week," he tells Lady Hesketh (November 26, 1786), "they (the Throckmortons) both went with me to the cliff—a scene, my dear, in which you would delight beyond measure, but which you cannot visit except in the spring or autumn. The heat of summer and the clinging dirt of winter would destroy you. What is called the cliff is no cliff, nor at all like one, but a beautiful terrace, sloping gently down to the Ouse, and from the brow of which, though not lofty, you have a view of such a valley as makes that which you see from the hills near Olney, and which I have had the honour to celebrate, an affair of no consideration." He thus alludes to it in "The Task: "How oft upon yon eminence our pace Has slackened to a pause, and we have borne And still unsated, dwelt upon the scene." By a few vivid touches he then lays the charming panorama before his readers, the "slow winding Ouse," the square tower of Clifton church, the tall spire of Olney, "groves, heaths, and smoking villages remote." From this elevation may be descried, in clear weather, the village of Steventon, in Beds, and also the faint profile of Bow Brickhill. In Cowper's day Clifton Hall could be seen peeping through the trees on Clifton Hill, whilst on the right stood out conspicuously Weston Hall, the mansion of the Throckmortons. After leaving this eminence and passing through several other fields we crossed the railway (the Midland branch from Bedford to Northampton), the scream of whose engine when first heard probably gave as much alarm to the sheep of these fields, as the sound of the huntsman's horn did to their progenitors who obtained celebrity by "The Needless Alarm." Next we passed the farm-house of Hungry Hall, and its spinnie-trees dotted with magpies' nests; and thence by hedge and ditch, still starred by the celandine, or, to call it by its local name, the crow-pightle, made for the field called "Danes' Close." Surely every acre of English ground is historical, and if one would take the trouble to investigate, would be found to be interestingly connected either in name or associations with some stirring epoch in our nation's story : you can enter scarcely a hamlet or farm-house without hearing some tradition of Dane or Briton, robber or wizard, bishop or king. Our interest in the close was heightened by information concerning two other enclosures hard by, Broadroad and Watts' Field, both of which, in addition to crops of turnips, occasionally yield broken sword-blades and rusty fragments of armour. But who the combatants were, when they fought, or why they fought, nobody has ascertained: they may have been Britons and Romans, hacking one another, and being hacked, at the time the eagles of Rome were advancing through the island; they may have been Cavaliers and Roundheads riddling one another with bullets in one of the frequent skirmishes between Rupert and Skippon-all that we know is, that a few of their rusty weapons, from which it would be idle to attempt to extract the secret, are now and again picked up. Then our conversation turned to the hawks that frequent the neighbouring woods and occasionally help themselves to the farmers' chickens, woodpeckers speckled and green, and the last badger that was dug out of Yardley Chase. Luckless little mammal! But why was he not let alone? This English propensity for digging out, knocking down, and knocking over everything that crosses our path is rapidly clearing the fields of all things animate and wild. But it is not the death of a badger, "the last of England's wild beasts," as Phil Robinson aptly calls it, or of any other comparatively harmless little animal, that is most lamented by those who love the country; and it is not even the slaughter of the larger of our English birdsthough I am sure the reader would have been grieved had he seen the jackdaw that lay dead, but still warm, at a stile—a poor unfortunate that was stigmatised by the labourer who killed it as a "mischievous young beggar," and would heartily have wished that jackdaws were less sinful or ploughmen's hearts more tender. All this havoc is undesirable enough, but what is most to be deplored is the wholesale destruction, every spring, and for no earthly reason except the mere love of mischief, of the eggs of the smaller birds, even the sweetest songsters. Our woods and hedgerows are rapidly depeopling, and North Bucks is unhappily as badly off in this respect as other districts, many species of small birds that were once common having in recent years quite disappeared. Surely those who love birds and delight in their song should not rest satisfied, as many do, with talking regretfully of the gradual disappearance |