that it was of no use to be looking at Rachel: He did, however, and Rachel said he came to look at Fanny. I bestirred myself, therefore, to become acquainted with him. His stiffness was only of the manners. I found him a genial, cultivated, warm-hearted person; in fact, I liked him. How cold the word sounds now, applied to one whom I afterwards came to love as a brother, whose gentle heart sympathized in all our troubles, whose tears were ever ready to mingle with our own!

He gave us every opportunity of finding him out, joined us in our sunset walks, and in our long sittings under the trees. I soon came to be well satisfied that he should look at Fanny, - satisfied that she should watch for his coming, and blush when he came. I was happy to see the mist she once spoke of slowly gathering before her own eyes, and to know, from the strange quiet which came over her, that some new influence was at work within her heart.

The beauty of Rachel seemed each day more brilliant. Amid such happy influences, the lively, genial side of her nature expanded like a flower in the sunshine. "The soul of Rachel Lowe," having no longer to stand alone, bearing the weight of its own sorrows, brought its energies to promote the happiness of us all. She contrived pleasant surprises, and charmed Aunt Huldah with her constant acts of kindness. She sang beautiful songs, and filled the house with flowers; and when we sat long, in the cool of the evening, out under the trees, she would relate strange, wild stories which she had heard from her mother, -stories of other times and distant lands.

Meanwhile Aunt Huldah was as kind as heart could wish, treating us tenderly, and as if we were little children; and one stormy night, when we four sat with her in the keeping-room, talking, until daylight faded, and the short twilight left us nearly in darkness, she told us some things about her own youth, things of which, by daylight, she would never have spoken, and told, too, of a dear, only

brother, who was ruined for all time, and, she feared, for eternity also, from being crossed in love by the strong will of his father. Aunt Huldah had a tender heart. Her voice grew thick and hoarse, while telling the story. I was always glad we had that talk. It made us know her better. She lived only a year after. She died in June, when the grass was green and the roses were in bloom,- just a year from that Sabbath I spent at home, that perfect day when I walked to meeting with Rachel up the grassy lane. With sad hearts, we laid her to rest in a spot that she loved, where the sweet - fern and wild-roses were growing, -with sad, grateful hearts, for she had been to us as father, mother, and true friend. We loved her for the affection she showed, and still more for that which we knew she concealed within herself,- for the tenderness she would not let be revealed.

The next year Rachel and I were married, thus making the month of June trebly sacred. We had a double wedding; for the young minister, finding that he had looked at Fanny too long for his own tranquillity, proposed to mend matters in a way which no one whose faculties were not strangely betwisted by love would ever have thought of. And my sister must either have secretly liked the plan, or else have lost her old faculty of managing; for, when he said, “Come, Fanny, and let us dwell together in the parsonage," she went, just as quiet as a lamb.

Rachel and I remained, and do remain to this day, at the old house. Fanny said we ought to go into the world,— that I might possibly become brilliant, and Rachel would certainly be admired. But the first of these suggestions had little weight with me; and Rachel said how nice it would be to live here among the apple-trees, near Fanny, to read books, sing songs, and so have a good time all our lives!

"And have nobody but Charley see how handsome you are!" exclaimed Fanny.

Rachel did n't color at this, but re

marked, a little roguishly, that she would rather have one of those sidelong looks I used to give her in the old school-house than all the admiration in the world.

This was the time when I chose my profession, as mentioned in the beginning. And I may say that we have had a good time all our lives. Yet we have known sorrow. Four times has the dark shadow fallen upon our hearts; four sad processions have passed up the narrow lane; four little graves, by the side of Aunt Huldah's, show where, standing together, we wept tears of agony! Yet we stood together; and Rachel, who knew so well, taught me how to bear. In every hour of anguish I have found myself leaning upon the strong, steadfast "soul of Rachel Lowe." I say still, therefore, that we have had a good time, for we have loved one another all our lives. And we have never been too much alone. Plenty of friends have been glad to come and see us; and on Anniversary Week we have usually made a journey to Boston, to wear off the rust, and get stirred up generally. We attend most frequently the Anti

Slavery Conventions. I know of no better place, whether for getting stirred up, or wearing off the rust. That couple whom you may have noticed sitting near the platform that bald-headed old gentleman and intelligent-looking elderly lady -are my wife and I. We met with the early Abolitionists in a stable; we saw Garrison dragged through the streets, and heard Phillips's first speech in Faneuil Hall.

I have always kept my old habit of watching pretty faces; only I don't look sideways now for the girls never think that an old man cares to see them; but he does. We have one son, who Fanny devoutly hopes will turn out better than his father. May he go through life as happily! And he is in a fair way for it. I like to see him with Jenny, the pretty daughter of my friend the watchmaker. If my good friend thinks to keep always with him that youngest one of his flock, he will find his mistake; for it was only yesterday that I saw them sitting together on the seat in the low-branching apple-tree.

HUMAN nature is impatient of mysteries. The occurrence of an event out of the line of common causation, the advent of a person not plastic to the common moulds of society, causes a great commotion in this little ant-hill of ours. There is perplexity, bewilderment, a running hither and thither, until the foreign substance is assigned a place in the ranks; and if there be no rank to which it can be ascertained to belong, a new rank shall be created to receive it, rather than that it shall be left to roam up and down, baffling, defiant, and alone. Indeed, so great is our abhorrence of outlying, unclassified facts, that we are often ready to accept classification for explanation;

and having given our mystery a niche and a name, we cease any longer to look upon it as mysterious. The village-schoolmaster, who displayed his superior knowledge to the rustics gazing at an eclipse of the sun by assuring them that it was "only a phenomenon," was but one of a great host of wiseacres who stand ready with brush and paint-pot to label every new development, and fancy that in so doing they have abundantly answered every reasonable inquiry concerning cause, character, and consequence.

When William Blake flashed across the path of English polite society, society was confounded. It had never had to do with such an apparition before, and

was at its wits' end. But some Daniel was found wise enough to come to judgment, and pronounce the poet - painter mad; whereupon society at once composed itself, and went on its way rejoicing.

There are a few persons, however, who are not disposed to let this verdict stand unchallenged. Mr. Arthur Gilchrist, late a barrister of the Middle Temple, a man, therefore, who must have been accustomed to weigh evidence, and who would not have been likely to decide upon insufficient grounds, wrote a life of Mr. Blake, in which he strenuously and ably opposed the theory of insanity. From this book, chiefly, we propose to lay before our readers a slight sketch of the life of a man who, whether sane or insane, was one of the most remarkable productions of his own or of any age.

One word, in the beginning, regarding the book before us. The death of its author, while as yet but seven chapters of his work had been printed, would preclude severe criticism, even if the spirit and purpose with which he entered upon his undertaking, and which he sustained to its close, did not dispose us to look leniently upon imperfections of detail. Possessing that first requisite of a biographer, thorough sympathy with his subject, he did not fall into the opposite error of indiscriminate panegyric. Looking at life from the standpoint of the "madman," he saw how fancies could not only appear, but be, facts; and then, crossing over, he looked at the madman from the world's standpoint, and saw how these soul-born facts could seem not merely fancies, but the wild vagaries of a crazed brain. For the warmth with which he espoused an unpopular cause, for the skill with which he set facts in their true light, for the ability which he brought to the defence of a man whom the world had agreed to condemn, for the noble persistence with which he forced attention to genius that had hitherto received little but neglect, we cannot too earnestly express our gratitude. But he greater our admiration of material

excellence, the greater is our regret for superficial defects. The continued oversight of the author would doubtless have removed many infelicities of style; yet we marvel that one with so clear an insight should ever, even in the first glow of composition, have involved himself in sentences so complicated and so obscure. The worst faults of Miss Sheppard's worst style are reproduced here, joined to an unthriftiness in which she had no part nor lot. Not unfrequently a sentence is

a conglomerate in which the ideas to be conveyed are heaped together with no apparent attempt at arrangement, unity, or completeness. Surely, it need be no presumptuous, but only a tender and reverent hand that should have organized these chaotic periods, completing the work which death left unfinished, and sending it forth to the world in a garb not unworthy the labor of love so untiringly bestowed upon it by the lamented author.

To show that our strictures are not undeserved, we transcribe a few sentences, taken at random from the memoir :

"Which decadence it was led this Pars to go into the juvenile Art-Academy line, vice Shipley retired."

"The unusual notes struck by William Blake, in any case appealing but to one class and a small one, were fated to remain unheard, even by the Student of Poetry, until the

Poetry, until the process of regeneration had run its course, and, we may say, the Poetic Revival gone to seed again: seeing that the virtues of simplicity and directness the new poets began by bringing once more into the foreground, are those least practised now."

"In after years of estrangement from Stothard, Blake used to complain of this mechanical employment as engraver to a fellow-designer, who (he asserted) first borrowed from one that, in his servile capacity, had then to copy that comrade's version of his own inventions - as to motive and composition his own, that is."

"And this imposing scroll of fervid truisms and hap-hazard generalities, as often disputable as not, if often acute and striking, always ingenuous and pleas

ant, was, like all his other writings, warmly welcomed in this country."

Let us now go back a hundred years, to the time when William Blake was a fair-haired, smooth-browed boy, wandering aimlessly, after the manner of boys, about the streets of London. It might seem at first a matter of regret that a soul full of all glowing and glorious fancies should have been consigned to the damp and dismal dulness of that crowded city; but, in truth, nothing could be more fit. To this affluent, creative mind dinginess and dimness were not. Through the grayest gloom golden palaces rose before him, silver pavements shone beneath his feet, jewelled gates unfolded on golden hinges turning, and he wandered forth into a fair country. What need of sunshine and bloom for one who saw in the deepest darkness a "light that never was on sea or land"? Rambling out into the pleasant woods of Dulwich, through the green meadows of Walton, by the breezy heights of Sydenham, bands of angels attended him. They walked between the toiling haymakers, they hovered above him in the apple-boughs, and their bright wings shone like stars. For him there was neither awe nor mystery, only delight. Angels were no more unnatural than apples. But the honest hosier, his father, took different views. Never in all his life had that worthy citizen beheld angels perched on tree-tops, and he was only prevented from administering to his son a sound thrashing for the absurd falsehood by the intercession of his mother. Ah, these mothers! By what fine sense is it that they detect the nascent genius for which man's coarse perception can find no better name than perverseness, and no wiser treatment than brute force?

The boy had much reason to thank his mother, for to her intervention it was doubt less largely due that he was left to follow his bent, and haunt such picture-galleries as might be found in noblemen's houses and public sale-rooms. There he feasted his bodily eyes on earthly beauty, as his mental gaze had been charmed with heav

enly visions. From admiration to imitation was but a step, and the little hands soon began to shape such rude, but loving copies as Raffaelle, with tears in his eyes, must have smiled to see. His father, moved by motherly persuasions, as we can easily infer, bought him casts for models, that he might continue his drawing-lessons at home; his own small allowance of pocket-money went for prints; his wistful child-face presently became known to dealers, and many a cheap lot was knocked down to him with amiable haste by friendly auctioneers. Then and there began that life-long love and loyalty to the grand old masters of Germany and Italy, to Albrecht Dürer, to Michel Angelo, to Raffaelle, which knew no diminution, and which, in its very commencement, revealed the eclecticism of true genius, because the giants were not the gods in those days.

But there came a time when Pegasus must be broken in to drudgery, and travel along trodden ways. By slow, it cannot be said by toilsome ascent, the young student had reached the vestibule of the temple; but

"Every door was barred with gold, and opened

but to golden keys,"

which, alas! to him were wanting. Nothing daunted, his sincere soul preferred to be a doorkeeper in the house of his worship rather than a dweller in the tents of Mammon. Unable to be an artist, he was content for the time to become an artisan, and chose to learn engraving, — a craft which would keep him within sight and sound of the heaven from which he was shut out. Application was first made to Ryland, then in the zenith of his fame, engraver to the King, friend of authors and artists, himself a graceful, accomplished, and agreeable gentleman. But the marvellous eyes that pierced through mortal gloom to immortal glory saw also the darkness that brooded behind uncanny light. "I do not like the man's face," said young Blake, as he was leaving the shop with his father; "it looks as if he will live to be hanged." The negotiation failed; Blake was appren

ticed to Basire; and twelve years after, the darkness that had lain so long in ambush came out and hid the day: Ryland was hanged.

His new master, Basire, was one of those workmen who magnify their office and make it honorable. The most distinguished of four generations of Basires, engravers, he is represented as a superior, liberal-minded, upright man, and a kind master. With him Blake served out his seven years of apprenticeship, as faithful, painstaking, and industrious as any blockhead. So great was the confidence which he secured, that, month after month, and year after year, he was sent out alone to Westminster Abbey and the various old churches in the neighborhood, to make drawings from the monuments, with no oversight but that of his own taste and his own conscience. And a rich reward we may well suppose his integrity brought him, in the charming solitudes of those old-time sanctuaries. Wandering up and down the consecrated aisles, eagerly peering through the dim, religious light for the beautiful forms that had leaped from many a teeming brain now turned to dust,-reproducing, with patient hand, graceful outline and deepening shadow,- his daring, yet reverent heart held high communion with the ages that were gone. The Spirit of the Past overshadowed him. The grandeur of Gothic symbolism rose before him. Voices of dead centuries murmured low music down the fretted vault. Fair ladies and brave gentlemen came up from the solemn chambers where they had lain so long in silent state, and smiled with their olden grace. Shades of nameless poets, who had wrought their souls into a cathedral and died unknown and unhonored, passed before the dreaming boy, and claimed their immortality. Nay, once the Blessed Face shone through the cloistered twilight, and the Twelve stood roundabout. In this strange solitude and stranger companionship many an old problem untwined its Gordian knot, and whispered along its loosened ength,

"I give you the end of a golden string:
Only wind it into a ball,

It will lead you in at Heaven's gate,
Built in Jerusalem wall."

To an engraving of " Joseph of Arimathea among the Rocks of Albion," executed at this time, he appends,-"This is one of the Gothic artists who built the Cathedrals in what we call the Dark Ages, wandering about in sheepskins and goatskins; of whom the world was not worthy. Such were the Christians in all ages."

Yet, somewhere, through mediæval gloom and modern din, another spirit breathed upon him,- a spirit of green woods and blue waters, the freshness of May mornings, the prattle of tender infancy, the gambols of young lambs on the hill-side. From his childhood, Poetry walked hand in hand with Painting, and beguiled his loneliness with wild, sweet harmonies. Bred up amid the stately, measured, melodious platitudes of the eighteenth century, that Golden Age of commonplace, he struck down through them all with simple, untaught, unconscious directness, and smote the spring of ever-living waters. Such wood-notes wild as trill in Shakspeare's verse sprang from the stricken chords beneath his hand. The little singing-birds that seem almost to have leaped unbidden into life among the gross creations of those old Afreets who

"Stood around the throne of Shakspeare,

Sturdy, but unclean,"

carolled their clear, pure lays to him, and left a quivering echo. Fine, fleeting fantasies we have, a tender, heartfelt, heart-reaching pathos, laughter that might at any moment tremble into tears, eternal truths, draped in the garb of quaint and simple story, solemn fervors, subtile sympathies, and the winsomeness of little children at their play, — sometimes glowing with the deepest color, often just tinged to the pale and changing hues of a dream, but touched with such coy grace, modulated to such free, wild rhythm, suffused with such a delicate, evanishing loveliness, that they seem