not willingly let die." In the autumn of 1767, they met as residents in the same town; the impenitent prodigal of the isle of Plantanes was then "the Rev. JOHN NEWTON, Curate of Olney," and the desponding recluse of St. Alban's was "WILLIAM COWPER, Esq., of the Inner Temple," destined to be "the author of the Task," and the regenerator of English poesy, at the end of the eighteenth century.
It is not necessary here to trace the remarkable changes of life, and the greater changes of heart, which had made these two men as much to differ from what they formerly were as though they had been new creatures in every thing except personal identity. Newton s story (told by himself in letters to a friend) contains a more striking variety of "moving accidents by flood and field" than can often be found in the memoirs of a private adventurer. Fourteen times at least, on his own testimony, he was saved from imminent death, and almost as often (judging by his spiritual state,) "plucked as a brand from the fire" that "is not quenched." From his detestable thraldom on the coast of Africa he was rescued by a messenger from his father, to whom he had repeatedly written for help without receiving any answer. Even in this instance he was delivered against his will, having left the hard service of his first master and engaged with another, who allowed him such a share of the hire of iniquity in the staple traffic of the coast, that he grew savagely in love with his inhuman occupation, and so eagerly grasped at its filthy lucre, that the captain of the vessel was tempted to use falsehood to lure him away from it, under pretence that a large fortune had been bequeathed to him in Europe. The hardening, demoralizing, soul - destroying effects of evil associations which he began to feel he thus de-
