But you have so generously and openly desired that I will divide my griefs with you that I cannot hide what it has now become my duty to explain.  My unhappiness has arisen from a source which, if explored too narrowly, might hurt my pecuniary circumstances; as my dependence is on engraving at present, and particularly on the engravings I have in hand for Mr. Hayley, and I find on all hands great objections to my doing anything but the mere drudgery of business, and intimations that, if I do not confine myself to this, I shall not live.  This has always pursued me.  You will understand by this the source of all my uneasiness.  This from Johnson and Fuseli brought me down here, and this from Mr. Hayley will bring me back again.  For that I cannot live without doing my duty to lay up treasures in heaven is certain and determined, and to this I have long made up my mind.  And why this should be made an objection to me, while drunkenness, lewdness, gluttony, and even idleness itself, does not hurt other men, let Satan himself explain.  The thing I have most at heart—­more than life, or all that seems to make life comfortable without—­is the interest of true religion and science.  And whenever anything appears to affect that interest (especially if I myself omit any duty to my station as a soldier of Christ), it gives me the greatest of torments.  I am not ashamed, afraid, or averse to tell you what ought to be told—­that I am under the direction of messengers from heaven, daily and nightly.  But the nature of such things is not, as some suppose, without trouble or care.  Temptations are on the right hand and on the left.  Behind, the sea of time and space roars and follows swiftly.  He who keeps not right onwards is lost; and if our footsteps slide in clay, how can we do otherwise than fear and tremble?  But I should not have troubled you with this account of my spiritual state, unless it had been necessary in explaining the actual cause of my uneasiness, into which you are so kind as to inquire:  for I never obtrude such things on others unless questioned, and then I never disguise the truth.  But if we fear to do the dictates of our angels, and tremble at the tasks set before us; if we refuse to do spiritual acts because of natural fears or natural desires; who can describe the dismal torments of such a state!—­I too well remember the threats I heard!—­’If you, who are organized by Divine Providence for spiritual communion, refuse, and bury your talent in the earth, even though you should want natural bread,—­sorrow and desperation pursue you through life, and after death shame and confusion of face to eternity.  Every one in eternity will leave you, aghast at the man who was crowned with glory and honour by his brethren, and betrayed their cause to their enemies.  You will be called the base Judas who betrayed his friend!’—­Such words would make any stout man tremble, and how then could I be at ease?  But I am now no longer in that state, and now go on again with my task, fearless though my path is difficult.  I have no fear of stumbling while I keep it.