"How airy and how light the graceful arch,
Yet awful as the consecrated roof
Re-echoing pious anthems! while beneath,
The chequered earth seems restless as a flood
Brushed by the wind.
So sportive is the light
Shot through the boughs, it dances as they dance,
Shadow and sunshine intermingling quick,
And darkening and enlightening, as the leaves
Play wanton, every moment, every spot.

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Such were the scenes dearest to Cowper, and dear to many still for his sake. T rue, they are not unlike others. A thousand scenes are as beautiful, and many an avenue up and down in English parks is of a nobler stateliness. Yet may this be visited with a special delight, for its own sake and for Cowper's. It is something to be able to look with a poet's eye, to have his thoughts and words so familiar to memory as to blend with the current of our own, as if spontaneously. We learn anew how to observe, and our emotions become almost unconsciously ennobled and refined.

It is characteristic of Cowper's mind that scenery of a loftier and more exciting order had a disquieting effect upon him. Of his journey to Eastham, in Sussex, to visit his friend Hayley, he writes: "I indeed myself was a little daunted by the tremendous height of the Sussex hills, in comparison with which all that I had seen elsewhere are dwarfs. But I only was alarmed; Mrs. Unwin had no such sensations, but was always cheerful from the beginning of our expedition to the end of it." And again: "The charms of the place, uncommon as they are, have not in the least alienated my affections from Weston. The genius of that place, suits me better; it has an air of snug concealment, in which a disposition like mine feels peculiarly gratified, whereas here, I see from every window woods like forests, and hills like mountains—a wildness, in short, that rather increases my natural melancholy." A little while before, on Mr. Newton's return from the glories of Cheddar, Cowper writes: "I would that I could see some of the mountains which you have seen, especially because Dr. Johnson has pronounced that no man is qualified to be a poet who has never seen a mountain. But mountains I shall never see, unless perhaps in a dream, or unless there are such in heaven. Nor those," the poor, heart-stricken poet makes haste to add, "unless I receive twice as much mercy as ever yet was shown to any man."