Sunday morning.

DEAR SCULPTOR OF ETERNITY,

We are safe arrived at our cottage, which is more beautiful than I thought it, and more convenient.  It is a perfect model for cottages, and I think for palaces of magnificence, only enlarging not altering its proportions, and adding ornaments and not principles.  Nothing can be more grand than its simplicity and usefulness.  Simple without intricacy, it seems to be the spontaneous expression of humanity, congenial to the wants of man.  No other formed house can ever please me so well, nor shall I ever be persuaded, I believe, that it can be improved either in beauty or use.

Mr. Hayley received us with his usual brotherly affection.  I have begun to work.  Felpham is a sweet place for study, because it is more spiritual than London.  Heaven opens here on all sides her golden gates:  her windows are not obstructed by vapours; voices of celestial inhabitants are more distinctly heard, and their forms more distinctly seen; and my cottage is also a shadow of their houses.  My wife and sister are both well, courting Neptune for an embrace.

Our journey was very pleasant; and though we had a great deal of luggage, no grumbling.  All was cheerfulness and good humour on the road, and yet we could not arrive at our cottage before half-past eleven at night, owing to the necessary shifting of our luggage from one chaise to another; for we had seven different chaises and as many different drivers.  We set out between six and seven in the morning of Thursday, with sixteen heavy boxes and portfolios full of prints.

And now begins a new life, because another covering of earth is shaken off.  I am more famed in heaven for my works than I could well conceive.  In my brain are studies and chambers filled with books and pictures of old, which I wrote and painted in ages of 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?  The Lord our Father will do for us and with us according to His divine will, for our good.

You, O dear Flaxman! are a sublime archangel,—­my friend and companion from eternity.  In the divine bosom is our dwelling-place.  I look back into the regions of reminiscence, and behold our ancient days before this earth appeared in its vegetated mortality to my mortal vegetated eyes.  I see our houses of eternity which can never be separated, though our mortal vehicles should stand at the remotest corners of heaven from each other.

Farewell, my best friend!  Remember me and my wife in love and friendship to our dear Mrs. Flaxman, whom we ardently desire to entertain beneath our thatched roof of rusted gold.

TO THOMAS BUTTS

Trouble in the path

Felpham, 10 Jan. 1802.

Dear Sir,