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In fact, Cowper saw very few beautiful scenes, but his poetical eye, and his moral heart, detected beauty in the sandy flats of Buckinghamshire." The walk, especially, from the quiet little town to the village of Weston Underwood, he has made classic among English scenes by the description in the first book of the Task.

Leaving Olney, where, in truth, there is not much to detain us, save the poet's home—the same in outward aspect, at least, as during the twenty years spent by him within its walls,—and the summer-house in the garden where he sat and wrote, while Mrs. Unwin knitted, and Puss, Tiny, and Bess sported upon the grass—we may climb the little eminence above the river, and with an admiration like that of the poet ninety years ago, "dwell upon the scene." "Here is the "distant plough slow moving," and

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"Here Ouse, slow winding through a level plain
Of spacious meads, with cattle sprinkled o'er,
Conducts the eye along his sinuous course Delighted.
There, fast rooted in their bank,
Stand, never overlooked, our favourite elms.
That screen the herdsman's solitary hut;
While far beyond, and overthwart the stream,
That, as with molten glass, inlays the vale,
The sloping land recedes into the clouds;
Displaying on its varied side the grace
Of hedgerow beauties numberless, square tower,
Tall spire, from which the sound of cheerful bells
Just undulates upon the listening ear;
Groves, heathes and smoking villages remote."

We are now at the upper corner of the Throckmorton Park. Pursuing our way, we listen to the music of "nature inanimate," of rippling brook or sighing wind, and of "nature animate," of "ten thousand warblers" that so soothed the poet's soul. A dip in the walk from where the elms enclose the upper park, and the chestnuts spread their shade, brings us into a grassy dell where by "a rustic bridge" we cross to the opposite slope, reascend to the "alcove," survey from the "speculative height" the pasture with its "fleecy tenants," the "sunburnt hayfield," the "woodland scene," the trees, each with its own hue, as so exquisitely depicted by the poet, while Ouse in the distance "glitters in the sun." At length the great avenue is reached.