Now the "Chimney Sweeper" in Songs of Experience," breaks in upon this innocent peace. Even the little child, who speaks in the poem, catches the shadow of the writer's gloom. He says that his father and his mother are gone up to the church to pray, having

taken him from the heath where he was happy, to make him the little black slave of his master. They clothed him in the clothes of death," and by the hard fate to which they condemned him, they taught him to "sing the notes of woe. Somehow, as Blake so subtly saw, the youth of his spirit asserted itself. They could not quite crush out of him his childhood and its instinctive joy. But they had done their worst, and there was the bitterness of it.

In the two "Holy Thursdays," again, two different views are taken of the lives of children. The one is the view suggested to an easily satisfied man by the spectacle of the charity children under the dome of St. Paul's. He sees, complacently, their innocent faces clean." They are to him "these flowers of London town.' To him they have a radiance all their own." But in the second" Holy Thursday," Blake wants to know whether it is a holy thing" to see, in a rich and fruitful land, babes reduced to misery ?"

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"Is that trembling cry a song, Can it be a song of joy,

And so many children poor?

It is a land of poverty."

And the moral, to the poet, still simple in his bitterness, is that things are very wrong:

"For where'er the sun does shine

And where'er the rain does fall,
Babes should never hunger there,

Nor poverty the mind appal." Having stated which truth, or truism, in his strongest poet's way, and so done his part, he ends-leaving the matter to the political economists, who, as it would appear, have not, during these hundred years, succeeded in settling it.

But the strongest and most passionate note uttered in Songs of Experience" is one which is uttered only there, and It is in the poem there only once. which he calls simply "London"—in it, before his mental eye, the evils of the town are concentrated, are brought to a focus. It seems that as he walks in

London the faces that he sees make him wretched. His view, however it may be morbid and exaggerated, shows at all events one side of a truth-he sees, in 'marks of weakevery face he meets, There is someness, marks of woe. thing sad to him in "the cry of every man"-the infant's, the chimney sweep's, the ill-fated soldier's. But most it is a woman's cry that strikes upon his spiritual ear.

"Most through midnight streets I hear How the youthful harlot's curse Blasts the new-born infant's tear,

And blights with plagues the marriage hearse."

His feeling here has waxed too strong for his power of expression. He is so intense that he becomes obscure. But his obscurity, with his volume of passion, is worth, many times over, the lucid mediocrity of less inspired bards.

Perhaps we have now succeeded-as far as brevity allowed-in making clear to some the order of beauty, both of design and of song, which is to be found, if it is properly sought, in the finest works of Blake-in the things by which he will certainly live. That is what we wanted to do. In other places it is easy and convenient to find accounts of his later and more voluminous writings, of his more ambitious designs; such a great series as that, for instance, which he executed for the "Night Thoughts''

of Young; such poems of his own as those included under the name of the "Prophetic Books," some of them strange visions and strange prophecies which we take to be more curious than finally satisfactory.

To return, with however short a treatment, to the story of his outward life. He lived long in Lambeth after he was in Broad Street-Hercules Buildingsthe abode, if we mistake not, of another neglected genius, the Triplet of "Masks and Faces." Hayley, the biographer of Romney, and himself quite a considerable poet in his own day-people estimated him, of course, a good deal by his riches and by the excellence of his country house-Hayley encouraged Blake for awhile, and induced him to remove to Felpham in Sussex, at the foot of that Sussex Down country which Copley Fielding afterward painted, and which Mr. Hine, in our own day, is painting with even more wonderful subtlety. Hayley lived in that countryside--had the good house of the district-it was there that the too frequent painter of the 'Divine Emma" came on his annual visit. And Hayley gave Blake commissions, during Blake's residence there. But at length the almost inevitable fussiness of a wealthy dilettante of absolute leisure began to annoy Blake very much -began to disturb and to thwart him. He wrote to London friends that he felt bound to return. He looked for the day of his deliverance, and at last it came. In London, at that period, Mr. Butts was his best patron: the friendly and always businesslike purchaser of so many of Blake's designs. Interesting accounts between them are furnished in Mrs. Gilchrist's new edition of her husband's book.

Returning to town, and living long in South Molton Street, Blake was associated more or less with Flaxman and Stothard; he was considerably wronged, it seems, by Cromek; and he had the faithful friendship of John Linnell. Linnell lived then at a remote farmhouse on the far side of Hampstead, and there Blake used very often to visit him, unbending, giving himself out in genial chat. It must have seemed pretty clear to the poet by that time that no wide popularity was coming to his versesthat no great prices, such as the most

impudent of incapacity cheerfully asks in our own day, were ever to be got for his pictures. But he, and his wife with him, went contentedly on-she, believing altogether in her husband; he, believing altogether in the paramount importance of his spiritual world, the comparative insignificance of material things. Poverty closed round him. He had no studio rich with the spoils of the East and of Italy, and adroitly enhancing to the innocent purchaser the value of all work done in it. He had now a few bareish rooms in Fountain Court, out of the Strand. There ill-health and enfeebled age fell upon him. He engraved what plates he could-realized what inventions he could-sometimes even when confined not only to his rooms, but to his bed. Getting out, now and again, he fetches his own beer from some public house at the corner-meets, under those circumstances, an artist who is just sufficiently celebrated to be careful with whom he is seen, and not exalted enough to be indifferent to what may be thought of the company he chooses to keep. And the just sufficiently celebrated artist does not, under those circumstances, think it prudent to speak to him. Blake goes home, only a little amused by the incident, to the rooms in Fountain Court.

There he was known by, among other artists, an artist then quite young, and now venerable-Samuel Palmer. Mr. Gilchrist wanted Mr. Samuel Palmer's impression of Blake, and in a very graphic, touching, and significant letter, Mr. Palmer gave it. This is how he concludes:

"He was one of the few to be met with in our passage through life who are not in some way or other double-minded' and inconsistent with themselves; one of the very few who cannot be depressed by neglect, and to whose name rank and station could add no lustre. Moving apart, in a sphere above the attraction of worldly honors, he did not accept greatness, but confer it. He ennobled poverty, and by his conversation and the influence of his genius, made two small rooms in Fountain Court more attractive than the threshold of princes."

Such, in the testimony of one who knew him-of one who was able to appreciate him-was William Blake. And so died on the 12th of August, 1827watched chiefly by his wife-the great in

ventor, the seer of visions so powerful and so terribly direct, engaged at the last in "composing and uttering songs to his Maker." His wife, Catherine, thought them so beautiful that the poor old man had need to tell her his belief that they were not his songs; he was but the instrument that uttered them. A lowly neighbor, who went away when

the old man had finally sunk, declared that she had been at the death of an angel. Was there then, in that humble room, any vision to gladden him like to his own most beautiful and most impressive design," the Morning Stars singing for joy"-the expression of an aspiration of his life, at last, after long years, to be realized ?—Temple Bar.

A STRANGE stillness and darkness, a gray, black twilight everywhere, broken only by a whiteness beneath; yet the darkness and stillness were nothing to me save as conditions that existed, but in which I had no concern. I passed out of the room, though no door opened for me, and down the stairs. There were faces I knew dimly, as in a dream; they went by sad and silent, not even seeing me. In a room beneath, where a flickering candle burned, were two human beings, the one a babe sleeping in its cot; I stood by its side for a moment, not knowing what made me stay, but I saw the child's face, and felt a strange comfort from the sight. The other was a man sitting by a table, his arms stretched out across it, and his head resting down upon them. He did not move or stir, his face was hidden, but I knew that he was bowed down by sorrow, and there was something that drew me to his side, that made me long to comfort him, to say pitying words, telling him how short were sorrow and sleep, how long were thought and waking. But the longing was undefined, and had no power to shape itself into action, and I stood silent and still. Then I put out my hand and touched his shoulder. He did not raise his head, but for the first time he moved, his frame was suddenly convulsed, and he sobbed bitterly. And so the night passed, he weeping and I watching, and stealthily and cruelly the morning light crept in at the staring uncurtained windows.

I was in the upper room again; I knew not how, nor how long after, for time and space had no more measure for me. I looked round the room; it was draped with white, and at one end there was a bed, and on it the outline of a hu

man form covered by a sheet.

There

seemed some dim memory hanging

about the room; but that was all, for consciousness returns but slowly, and knowledge remains but of few things, and only of those beings that have made a mark upon our souls that even death cannot efface. The door opened, and the man who had been weeping below entered, and suddenly I remembered and knew my husband. His face was sad and pale, his eyes were dim, his head was bent, but he raised it for a moment as he entered, and looked nervously round the room. I held out my arms to him, but he passed me by taking no notice; I called him by his name, but he did not hear me. He went up to the bed, and, kneeling down, took the handkerchief from over the dead face; step by step I went forward to look at it. It was my own!

..it

"Ah! no, no, no!" I shrieked, is not I! Í am here beside you, my husband! Oh! my love-my love-it is not I! I am here! Look at me, speak to me-I am here!" but the words died away, and he did not hear them, and I knew that sound had gone from me for ever. And still he knelt by the dead, giving it dear names, and showering down kisses upon it; and I stood by longing for all that was given for love of me, and yet not to me; stood looking with strange fear and shrinking at the white face and the still lips and the closed eyes-at that which had been my own self and was myself no more. But still he knelt there calling it me, and crying out to that which heard not, and saw not, and was but waiting for the black grave to hide it.

At last he covered the face with the handkerchief again, and rose and left the room. I could not follow him, and

waited in unutterable longing, to weep, but having no tears; to speak, but having no words; to die, but finding that time and death had passed by-that to death I had paid tribute and yet remained.

I looked round the room, and slowly there came dim memories of many things—of pain, and sorrow, and parting; of pain, that death had conquered, and that lay forever vanquished in that still form; of sorrow, that death had left, and that only one soul could conquer—a soul still living within a human body. I knew the room now it was the one I used to sleep in and had called my own; they had covered the furniture with white, and yet around and about lay things my hands had fashioned -hands that never more might stir a single leaf or move one atom from its place. Suddenly, in a corner of the room, I saw the uncovered lookingglass, and, wondering, remembered; and fearing and shrinking with a strange terror, I went forward, and standing before it, looked and saw-nothing. All else I saw-the room, the shrouded furniture, some fading flowers in a vase, the outline of the dead woman lying on the bed -everything; but of me that stood before it there was no sign, no trace-nothing-nothing. And still, scarce believing, and holding out my hands to it in my agony, I stood before it, but the vacant glass gave no sign, no trace; showed nothing-nothing. Then I understood then I realized-that sight and sound knew me no longer, and that the eyes I loved were blind to me in their waking hours-blind for evermore while time should last and time, that heaps dust on all things, would heap it up higher and higher between the memory of my face and him. But did he not feel my presence? did he not know that I was by him, and would be by him, until, at last, from out of the worn body, the soul should slowly lift itself into that which is but one step higher in the universe?-till meeting should be again, and sorrow and parting no more? For as the clay-fetters fall, dear, and the earthly chains one by one give way, our souls shall draw nearer and nearer, until slowly the mist shall dear and we shall see each other once NEW SERIES.-VOL, XXXIV., No. 1

more face to face, and out of the darkness of human pain shall come everlasting light. How the knowledge of this would help you! how it would comfort you to know that though sight and sound have gone, yet there is one thing that links the worlds together-one memory that binds the mortal to the immortal! For love, that is stronger than life, shall be stronger than death, and, passing on, shall look back upon death

the love that came to us from without, and shall pass out with us into that which ever has been and shall be, unto which no end is.

Through all the long days that followed I was with him, through all his lonely hours and passionate grief. I stood by him while he slept, and whispered loving words into his ears, and he heard them and was comforted. And we traveled back together along the dream-road to all that had been in the far-off time, and the remembrance of old sweet days came before his sleeping eyes; but things were not as we had left them, but shaped themselves differently, and wore strange and terrible faces that made him start from his sleep and look round the dark room, half fearing, half wondering, and he saw, not me standing beside him, but only the black hopelessness of the night. Or I would say strange words to him as he slept-words that in life I had never said, so that he might know there was a meeting-time yet to come, for of that I dared not speak; but he would not hear them.

Come to me in my waking hours,' he cried, and I could make no sign, no response. It is only in dreams that the dead have power over the living, for theirs is the land of which the living see only fitful gleams in their sleep-a land where, to the living, all seems, and nothing is, and nothing earthly has an abiding place. "It is only a dream," he would cry out in his despair; "it means nothing, it is only the fevered picturemaking of my own brain." Yet a world of our own creation we can in some way control; but in the world that we enter in our sleep, we have no power, no control.

At first I was always with him, for his thought and will and longing had power to bring me, to give me a voice in his

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