Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/72

 diagram of lovely vale—may be inspected in Williams' plodding History of Monmouthshire, and in other books of topography. Engravers had actually to copy and laboriously bite in these young-lady-like Indian ink drawings. Conspicuous mementoes of the vicar's Taste and munificence still survive, parochially, in the 'handsome crimson curtains' trimmed with amber, and held up by gold cord with heavy gold tassels, festooned about the painted eastern window of the church: or rather in deceptively perfect imitations of such upholstery, painted ('tis said) by the clergyman's own skilled hand on the light-grained wall of the circular chancel. The window is an eighteenth century remnant piously preserved from the old church: a window literally painted not stained—the colours not burnt in, that is; so that a deluded cleaner on one occasion rubbed out a portion. The subjects are armorial bearings of the St. Johns, and (at bottom) portraits of three august collateral connexions of the Family: Margaret Beauchamp, Henry VII. and Queen Elizabeth. The general effect is good in colour, not without a tinge of ancient harmony, yellow being the predominating hue. From the vicar's hand, again, are the two small 'paintings on glass,'—The Lamb bearing the sacred monogram, and The Dove (descending),—which fill the two circular side-windows, of an eminently domestic type, in the curvilinear chancel-wall: paintings so 'natural' and familiarly 'like,' an innocent spectator forgets perhaps their sacred symbolism—as possibly did the artist too! Did the future designer of The Gates of Paradise, the Jerusalem, and the Job, kneel beneath these trophies of religious art?