BLAKE'S VISION.

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the lawyer. The present writer, who has had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Crabb Robinson at Rydal Mount, in the company of William Wordsworth, can scarcely conceive such discomfiture. It was evidently complete.

But to return to the great question, which is not precisely whether Blake was sane within those limits of sanity which would satisfy a British jury, but whether he really saw, in any intelligible sense, those visions which he thoroughly believed he beheld. Did he, in very truth, behold a thing preternatural? Were his angels on Peckham Rye-his vision of Christ and His Apostles in the chapel of the Confessor-his maturer interviews with Shakespeare and Milton-the brief apparitions of the past, whose portraits he took in Varley's midnight companionship—were all these mere illusions? Certainly they were, returns the common-sense of this enlightened age. Certainly, William Blake, though a great painter, and a true poet, and a sound thinker, was under strange hallucination. Nothing of the kind could have occurred, it is obvious. However, if one must hallucinate, I prefer the company of William Blake to that of Mr. Home or the Davenports; and there is probably something in that utterance of the great master of English thought

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

CHARITY ORGANISATION.

CONCERNING charity as embodied in voluntary institutions much might be said: in a thoroughly well-governed State such institutions would be not only unnecessary, but impossible. The duty of healing the sick poor, of educating the fatherless poor, of guiding the people in the paths of moral and physical health, is the Government's first duty. King Alfred, the Truth-teller, saw this clearly a thousand years ago, but I am not certain that any monarch or statesman has effectually grasped it since. Whether an effort can be made to raise the dregs of the people from their sad state, while our House of Commons. is composed of such materials and actuated by such interests as at present, may well be doubted. The Lords and the Commons have their rifle-matches and their cricket-matches: why should they not go in for a legislation-match? Let the Lords sit alone for one Session, the Commons for another, tossing for choice. A very few innings would decide whether hereditary or representative legislature is of greater use. What is the betting?

What we call England is so called because the English

THE ENGLISH RACE.

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came to live here. The English made England, not England the English. If we were taken by surprise, as the invasion-prophets suggest, if London and Liverpool and Canterbury were laid in ashes by the nations who' believe in war, yet unless they extinguish the whole race the world would know us again. Let them leave but a handful of Englishmen, and we would have our revenge. What form that revenge would take the centuries must decide: probably we should produce another Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton, Newton, or Byron, while they were busy with mere Goethes and Schillers, Voltaires and Molières. This would, on the whole, be nobler and pleasanter than burning their cities, fusillading their men, insulting their women, and robbing them of their property. Still, the metal of which this race is made can be run into the old moulds that lie labelled in its mint-Blake, Nelson, Marlborough, Wellington, and many more.

What has all this to do with voluntary charities, or with orphans and foundlings? Very much-a great race should not run to waste. There are a large number of emulative orphan asylums which do in their way a considerable amount of good, and bring up fatherless children without much consideration of their fathers' rank in life. They advertise, they have public dinners, they invite princes to lay foundation stones, and ladies to present five-guinea purses to the said princes. I have noticed at least one case in which those purses did not altogether pay the expenses of the entertainment given. Loyal absolutely, I think princes were made for higher work. The directors of such institutions seem usually to be City

ht to be grateful to be allowed

passes this terrible ordeal of ete life thereafter must possess such institutions "anonymous ■nd-pound notes. Have these r the place and looked at the

rphan's is the foundling's. Let of gallant and generous Captain ble work he instituted has been business of mine just here to undlings. In a well-governed ay show, there would be none. and are absolute additions to why should they be starved, hy should the intolerant virtue em the sin of their scoundrel infanticide legal, as they do in r little creatures to such misery.

Let Government undertake the entire care of all necessitous orphans, of all foundlings. For the first, schools of at least three classes should be founded. The clergyman's orphan child ought not to be brought up in the same way as the greengrocer's. Contrary to equality, this; enough to make the defunct greengrocer start from his grave; but if he came we could puzzle him by asking why he was not a clergyman instead of a greengrocer. He would fall back on the delinquencies of his father, thereby admitting the theory of race. In the orphan establishments which exist at present, the mixture is usually so absurd that the classes for which they were intended do not attempt candidature. Add to this the abominable system of canvassing, which usually secures the election of the children whose friends have the greatest boring power.

What should Government do? Accept all orphans without question. Ascertain what can be known of birth and breed, and class them accordingly. Let there be High Colleges, in which the boys are educated to be of learned profession or gentlemanly vocation, in which the girls are taught what ladies need, and are fitted either to marry or be gentlewomen-in-waiting. Let there be Middle Colleges, wherein the best possible education shall be given to boys for farm life, tradesmen's work, the general commercial business of the land. Let there be Low Colleges, training boys to be artisans, labourers, soldiers, training girls to be servants in the household, in various positions, and to do other work which is known. as menial, such as that of the laundress, the sempstress, and a hundred other things that end in ess. Not neces