"A cheap but wholesome salad from the brook;"

and he compels our colder natures to follow his in its manifold
sympathies, not by exhortations, not by telling us to meditate at
midnight, to "indulge" the thought of death, or to ask ourselves how we
shall "weather an eternal night," _but by presenting to us the object of
his compassion truthfully and lovingly_. And when he handles greater
themes, when he takes a wider survey, and considers the men or the deeds
which have a direct influence on the welfare of communities and nations,
there is the same unselfish warmth of feeling, the same scrupulous
truthfulness. He is never vague in his remonstrance or his satire, but
puts his finger on some particular vice or folly which excites his
indignation or "dissolves his heart in pity," because of some specific
injury it does to his fellow-man or to a sacred cause. And when he is
asked why he interests himself about the sorrows and wrongs of others,
hear what is the reason he gives. Not, like Young, that the movements of
the planets show a mutual dependence, and that

"Thus man his sovereign duty learns in this
Material picture of benevolence,"

or that--

"More generous sorrow, while it sinks, exalts,
And conscious virtue mitigates the pang."

What is Cowper's answer, when he imagines some "sage, erudite, profound,"
asking him "What's the world to you?"

"Much. _I was born of woman_, _and drew milk_
_As sweet as charity from human breasts_.
I think, articulate, I laugh and weep,
And exercise all functions of a man.
How then should I and any man that lives
Be strangers to each other?"

Young is astonished that men can make war on each other--that any one can
"seize his brother's throat," while

"The Planets cry, 'Forbear.'"

Cowper weeps because

"There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart:
_It does not feel for man_."

Young applauds God as a monarch with an empire and a court quite superior
to the English, or as an author who produces "volumes for man's perusal."
Cowper sees his father's love in all the gentle pleasures of the home
fireside, in the charms even of the wintry landscape, and thinks--

"Happy who walks with him! whom what he finds
Of flavor or of scent in fruit or flower,
Or what he views of beautiful or grand
In nature, from the broad, majestic oak
To the green blade that twinkles in the sun,
_Prompts with remembranc