expressly by commission for the writer of this. After he had worked upon it he exclaimed: "There, I have done all I can! It is the best I have ever finished. I hope Mr. Tatham will like it." He threw it suddenly down and said: "Kate, you have been a good wife; I will draw your portrait." She sat near his bed, and he made a drawing which, though not a likeness, is finely touched and expressed. He then threw that down, after having drawn for an hour, and began to sing Hallelujahs and songs of joy and triumph which Mrs. Blake described as being truly sublime in music and in verse; he sang loudly and with true ecstatic energy, and seemed so happy that he had finished his course, that he had run his race, and that he was shortly to arrive at the goal, to receive the prize of his high and eternal calling. After having answered a few questions concerning his wife's means of living after his decease, and after having spoken of the writer of this as a likely person to become the manager of her affairs, his
blue above, deep blue and black below; gold is also used. The subject is taken from Paradise Lost, book vii. ll. 225-31:
"He took the golden Compasses, prepar'd
In God's Eternal store, to circumscribe
This Universe, and all created things:
One foot he center'd, and the other turn'd
Round through the vast profunditie obscure;
And said, thus farr extend, thus farr thy bounds,
This be thy just Circumference, O World."
