That William Blake was a mystic of the practical kind there can be no question. In art and in poetry he had that illumination which Lincoln had in statesmanship.

The New York Times says:—

"That a century has failed to heap the dust of oblivion over England's 'Greatest Mystic,' William Blake, is exemplified by the reproduction in a recent issue of Country Life of one of Blake's engravings for Dante's Inferno, in which four fiends with cruel faces are torturing a soul in Hell."

The face of the chief devil, who is not actually engaged in the torture, but is an eager and interested spectator, might easily be taken for a portrait of the German Emperor. As suggested by W. F. Boudillon, the familiar, upturned moustachios must have puzzled Blake in his vision. He represented them as tusks growing from the corners of the mouth—it is to be noted that this fiend alone among the four has the tusks.

It is recorded of Blake, as a lad, that his father would have apprenticed him to Rylands, the Court Engraver—a man much liked and in great prosperity at the time—but Blake objected, saying: "Father, I do not like his face; he looks as if he would live to be hanged." Twelve years later Rylands committed forgery, and the prophecy came true.

Blake's visions, startling though they be, are not more startling than many prophecies made by Lincoln, as, for instance, his prophecy of prohibition, woman's rights, and the end of slavery, not to mention his visions concerning himself. The practical mystic sees through, the scientific materialist sees only, the surface. Eternity is the everlasting now. Blake drew a faithful portrait of the Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany long before the Kaiser was born, and Tycho Brahe predicted the birth of a Swedish conqueror and what he would accomplish.

In these things there is no place for chance, nor is it true that the practical mystic is limited to poetry, or to art, or to music, or to religion, politics, and philosophy. Neither is the practical mystic confined to any particular social class or any creed.

Abraham Lincoln could not have directed affairs had he been a recluse. Before he became an adept in the direction of material affairs he had to be familiar with the practical ways of the world, and as a lawyer he passed through a school that left no place for vague theories or vain illusions. He frequently stripped others of their illusions, but being free of illusions himself he had none to lose. This made him invulnerable. His enemies were swayed by theories; nothing short of knowledge sufficed for this man, who reduced his adversaries to the position where they were kept constantly on the alert to know what manoeuvre to employ next. They moved in a region of guess-work where there was no law except that of their own confusion and discomfiture.