floating with the utmost self-complacence down the smooth current of his time; and Blake, sensitive, unique, protestant, impracticable, aggressive:  it was a rare freak of Fate that brought about such companionship; yet so true courtesy was there that for four years they lived and wrought harmoniously together,—­Hayley pouring out his harmless wish-wash, and Blake touching it with his fiery gleam.  Their joint efforts were hardly more pecuniarily productive than Blake’s single-handed struggles; but his life there had other and better fruits.  In the little cottage overlooking the sea, fanned by the pure breeze, and smiled upon by sunshine of the hills, he tasted rare spiritual joy.  Throwing off mortal incumbrance,—­never, indeed, an overweight to him,—­he revelled in his clairvoyance.  The lights that shimmered across the sea shone from other worlds.  The purple of the gathering darkness was the curtain of God’s tabernacle.  Gray shadows of the gloaming assumed mortal shapes, and he talked with Moses and the prophets, and the old heroes of song.  The Ladder of Heaven was firmly fixed by his garden-gate, and the angels ascended and descended.  A letter written to Flaxman, soon after his arrival at Felpham, is so characteristic that we cannot refrain from transcribing it:—­

“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 vapors; 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-humor 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.