ept my thanks for the trouble you take in
vending my poems, and still more for the interest you take in their
success. To be approved by the great, as Horace observed many years ago,
is fame indeed.

The winter sets in with great severity. The rigour of the season, and
the advanced price of grain, are very threatening to the poor. It is
well with those that can feed upon a promise, and wrap themselves up
warm in the robe of salvation. A good fireside and a well-spread table
are but very indifferent substitutes for those better accommodations; so
very indifferent, that I would gladly exchange them both for the rags
and the unsatisfied hunger of the poorest creature that looks forward
with hope to a better world, and weeps tears of joy in the midst of
penury and distress.

What a world is this! How mysteriously governed, and in appearance left
to itself! One man, having squandered thousands at a gaming-table, finds
it convenient to travel; gives his estate to somebody to manage for him;
amuses himself a few years in France and Italy; returns, perhaps, wiser
than he went, having acquired knowledge which, but for his follies, he
would never have acquired; again makes a splendid figure at home, shines
in the senate, governs his country as its minister, is admired for his
abilities, and, if successful, adored at least by a party. When he dies,
he is praised as a demi-god, and his monument records everything but his
vices.

The exact contrary of such a picture is to be found in many cottages at
Olney. I have no need to describe them; you know the characters I mean.
They love God, they trust Him, they pray to Him in secret, and, though
He means to reward them openly, the day of recompense is delayed. In the
meantime, they suffer everything that infirmity and poverty can inflict
upon them. Who would suspect, that has not a spiritual eye to discern
it, that the fine gentleman was one whom his Maker had in abhorrence,
and the wretch last mentioned dear to Him as the apple of His eye?

It is no wonder that the world, who are not in the secret, find
themselves obliged, some of them, to doubt a Providence, and others
absolutely to deny it, when almost all the real virtue there is in it is
to be found living and dying in a state of neglected obscurity, and all
the vices of others cannot exclude them from worship and honour. But
behind the curtain the matter is explained, very little, however, to the
satisfaction of the great.