cathedrals may acquire over the mind is inconceivable, unless we do as Blake did during this advantageous sojourn in the Abbey, so replenished with the most august memories and images. The verger's voice must cease to echo among the soaring shafts of the nave, the last vibration of the organ must die among the groinings of the roof. An absolute solitude must settle along the marble tombs and into the shadowy recesses. There must be no sounds but those faint, ceaseless, unearthly whispers of which every large cathedral is full—sighs, as it were, of the weary centuries, more stilly and enchaining than utter silence. Some definite object must be before us to hold the mind above the airy fancies of such a loneliness; some brass to be copied; some Templar to sketch and measure in his chain-mail (which the younger Stothard sketched so deliciously), as he lies stark along the dark, time-gnawn marble, or crouching in the panel of a crumbling tomb; or archives to search, and worm-eaten parchments to unroll, among earthy odours. It is after months of such experience as this that we begin to realise the dreadful beauty, the high majesty, of Gothic shrines and their clinging soul of imagination—the soul of many, not of one—of the ages, not of years. Mr. Gilchrist thinks it just possible that Blake may have seen the secret re-opening of the coffin which revealed the face of Edward I., and the 'yellow eyelids fallen,' which dropped so sternly over his angry eyes at Carlisle. In Blake's angels and women and, indeed, in most of his figures, we may see the abiding influence of these mediaeval studies in that element of patriarchal quietude which sits meditating among the wildest storms of action.
The style of Basire laid the foundation of Blake's own practice as an engraver. It was dry and solid, and fitted for the realisation of strong and abstract pictorial thinking *** In order to a right view of Blake's organisation, we must from the first bear in mind that he was a poetic thinker, who held in his hands two instruments of utterance—and 'with
