inhabit. A remark which induced Mr. Johnson at a subsequent period, to become the tenant of this mansion, as a scene more eligible for Cowper, than the town of Dereham.This town they also surveyed in their excursion; and after passing a night there, returned to Mundsley, which they quitted for the season on the seventh of October. They removed immediately to Dereham; but left it in the course of a month for Dunham-Lodge, which now became their settled residence. young The spirits of Cowper were not sufficiently revived to allow him to resume either his pen or his books; but the kindness of his kinsman continued to furnish him with inexhaustible amusement, by reading to him, almost incessantly, a series of novels, which, although they did not lead him to converse on what he heard, yet failed not to rivet his attention; and so to prevent his afflicted mind from preying on itself. In April 1796, the good, infirm old lady, whose infirmities continued to engage the tender attention of Cowper, even in his darkest periods of depression, received a visit from her daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Powley. On their departure, Mr. Johnson assumed the office which Mrs. Powley had tenderly performed for her venerable parent, and regularly read a chapter in the Bible every morning to Mrs. Unwin before she rose. It was the invariable custom of Cowper to visit his poor old friend the moment he had finished his breakfast, and to remain in her apartment while the chapter was read. In June the pressure of his melancholy appeared in some degree alleviated, for on Mr. Johnson's receiving the edition of Pope's Homer published by Mr. Wakefield, Cowper eagerly seized the book, and began to read the notes to himself with visible interest. They awakened his attention to his own version of Homer. In August he deliberately engaged in a revisal of the whole, and for some time produced almost sixty new lines a day. This mental occupation animated all his inti mate friends with a most lively hope of his speedy and But autumn repressed the hope perfect recovery. that summer had excited. In September the family removed from Dun-ham-Lodge to try again the influence of the sea-side, in their favourite village of Mundsley. Cowper walked frequently by the sea; but no apparent benefit arose, no mild relief from the inces sant pressure of melancholy. He had relinquished his Homer again, and could not yet be induced to resume it. Towards the end of October this interesting family of disabled invalides, and their affectionate attendants, retired from the coast to the house of Mr. Johnson in Dereham. A house now chosen for their winter residence, as Dunham-Lodge appeared to them too dreary. The long and exemplary life of Mrs. Unwin was drawing towards a close :-The powers of nature were gradually exhausted, and on the seventeenth of December she ended a troubled existence, distinguished by a sublime spirit of piety and friendship, that shone through long periods of calamity, and continued to glimmer through the distressful twilight of her declining faculties. Her death was uncommonly tranquil. Cowper saw her about half an hour before the moment of expiration, which passed without a struggle, or a groan, as the clock was striking one in the afternoon. On the morning of that day, he said to the servant who opened the window of his chamber :Sally, is there life above stairs?"-A striking proof of his bestowing incessant attention on the sufferings of his aged friend, although he had long appeared almost totally absorbed in his own. In the dusk of the evening he attended Mr. Johnson to survey the corpse; and after looking at it a few moments, he started suddenly away, with a vehement, but unfinished, sentence of passionate sorrow. He spoke of her no more. She was buried by torch-light, on the twentythird of December, in the north aisle of Dereham church; and two of her friends, impressed with a just and deep sense of her extraordinary merit have raised a marble tablet to her memory with the following inscription, IN MEMORY O F MARY, WIDOW OF THE REVD. MORLEY UNWIN, AND MOTHER OF THE REVD. WILLIAM CAWTHORN UNWIN, Born at ELY 1724, BURIED IN THIS CHURCH 1796. Trusting in God, with all her heart and mind, For all, who read his verse, revere her name. The infinitely tender and deep sense of gratitude that Cowper, in his seasons of health, invariably manifested towards this zealous and faithful guardian of his troubled existence, the agonies he suffered on our finding her under the oppression of a paralytic disease, during my first visit to Weston; and all his expressions to me concerning the comfort and support that his spirits had derived from her friendship, all made me peculiarly anxious to know, how he sustained the event of her death. It may be regarded as an instance of providential mercy to this afflicted poet, whose sensibility of heart, was so wonderfully acute, that his aged friend, whose life |