"What! shall the old African blasphemer stop while he can speak ?" At the instance of a common friend, Newton had paid Mrs.Unwin a visit at Huntingdon, after her husband's death, and had at once established the ascendancy of a powerful character over her and Cowper.

He now beckoned the pair to his side, placed them in the house adjoining his own, and opened a private door between the two gardens, so as to have his spiritual children always beneath his eye.

Under this, in the most essential respect, unhappy influence, Cowper and Mrs.Unwin together entered on "a decided course of Christian happiness." That is to say they spent all their days in a round of religious exercises without relaxation or relief.

On fine summer evenings, as the sensible Lady Hesketh saw with dismay, instead of a walk, there was a prayer-meeting.
Cowper himself was made to do violence to his intense shyness by leading in prayer.

He was also made to visit the poor at once on spiritual missions, and on that of almsgiving, for which Thornton, the religious philanthropist, supplied Newton and his disciples with means.
This, which Southey appears to think about the worst part of Newton's regimen, was probably its redeeming feature.