eternity, before my mortal life; and those works are the delight and study of archangels. Why, then, should I be anxious about the riches or fame of mortality?" He believed that the spirits of the great departed held converse with him, and he actually sketched their forms as they appeared before him. It was the spirit of his beloved brother Robert that directed him, so he said, to engrave the plates to his poems in their original method of execution and colour. But one of his most bizarre visions was the

Spirit of a Flea.

ghost or spiritualization of a flea, which he depicted in a scaly armour of green and gold, with a cup to hold blood in one hand, a dry, eager eye, and a formidable mouth, thirstily opening, and displaying a sharp tongue quivering in anxiety for its sanguinary meal. This extraordinary fancy, after he had sketched it, passed into the hands of the late John Varley, a fellow-artist and friend, and our cut is copied from the head of this portentous monster. After residing three years at Felpham, he returned to London,

and lodged at 17, South Molton Street, where he soon afterwards published his "Jerusalem." The designs are one hundred in number, and for them, when tinted, he charged 25 guineas. The public did not seem to care for such dreams, and he would have been unable to complete another series of twenty-one plates, to illustrate the "Book of Job," but for the kind aid of his brotherartist and loving friend, John Linnell, the landscape-painter, who possesses the original plates both of that series and the Dante. In 1809 he opened an exhibition of his works, of which he printed a catalogue as wild in its words as they were in ideas. The public were naturally mystified over such pictures as "The Spiritual form of Pitt guiding Behemoth;" particularly when they were told "the artist had been taken in a vision to the ancient republics of Asia, and had seen those wonderful originals called in sacred Scriptures the Cherubim," and that he "endeavoured to emulate the grandeur of those seen in his vision, and to apply it to modern times on a smaller scale."

Blake's last residence, when an old man, was at No. 3, Fountain Court, Strand; he expired in the back room of the first floor, on August 12, 1827, at the advanced age of sixty-nine. On his deathbed he persevered in his art, and, propped up by pillows, continued his designs to Dante, affectionately attended by his wife ; one time he suddenly ceased sketching his favourite angels to delineate her features, "for you have ever been an angel to me," said the dying man. It was his last work; he lay dreaming on, and the moment of his death was not perceived. He was buried in Bunhill-fields Cemetery.

For the illustrations to Dante he had completed nearly one hundred drawings, and had engraved seven plates. His enthusiasm for the author was so great that, at the age of sixtythree, he learned the Italian language more fully to enjoy his works. How he could interpret the great poet's vision our cut must show. It illustrates the thirty-second canto of the "Inferno," descriptive of the "frozen circle," where the spirits of the condemned are—

"Blue pinch'd and shrined in ice."

The earthly visitant is told to take—

"Good heed thy soles do tread not on the heads
Of thy poor brethren."

The icy sea freezes into oblivion many of "the great of old;" the rocks are composed of petrified humanity, and the lurid sky sweeps like a pall over Lethe: you feel the drear nature of the poet's scene more fully as you study Blake's pictured realization.

These seven plates were never published, only a few proofs were taken off for Blake's own use. All of them are in an unfinished state; in some instances the figures are slightly scratched on the copper with a dry point, and the burr remains on the lines. With much that is grand and poetic, there is mixed in these designs many horrible imaginings. They are unfinished, and must therefore be judged for their conception only; all are marked by that strong originality which characterised their author, and made him unlike any other artist. His works are now rare, the illustrated books of poetry particularly so; but there is so

much beauty, fancy, and simplicity in them, that they deserve to be better known. Of the "Songs of Innocence," an elegant edition was published in 1839, to which, by way of preface, are prefixed some excellent remarks upon Blake's character.

Blake's "Illustrations for the Book of Job" are deservedly prized as a fine, though carefully literal, embodiment of that sublime narrative. These were published in 1825.

F the world of Art be ennobled by men of high genius, whose walk through life is directed by high-mindedness,

how much more is "that smaller world" which claims to be their birthplace raised among the nations when she may say, "these are my sons!" England has few greater men to boast of than John Flaxman; and among all her artists there is not one to whom other nations will more willingly accord the place of